Course Assignments
   
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| Exercises & Projects | Start | Due | Format |
| Field Observation Exercises | |||
| Listening: Pick a place where you can listen & take notes for a 15-minute span. Record everything you hear in field notes. | 8/23 | 8/30 | wiki, print |
| Observe the place, process, or event that will be your subject for Project 3. Record your observations in field notes. | 9/27 | 10/10 | wiki |
| Sound Capture Exercise (3 min.) Working in a group of 2 or 3, record 7-15 distinct sounds collected from particular environments or events (auditory "fragments of actuality"). Sounds do not have to be evocative or illustrative of any particular idea, but should be chosen purely because you find them interesting, distinct, intriguingly rhythmic, or mysterious. Sounds must be collected from the world around you, not selections from music, soundtracks, or other pre-recorded material. Total running time of recordings submitted not to exceed 3 mins. |
9/3 | 9/12 | wiki |
| This American Life Assignment (600-1,000 words) Listen to, log, and analyze this 55-minute episode of the radio show: This American Life: #400, Stories Pitched by Our Parents Take notes as you listen. What is the program made of? What do you hear? What has been recorded? What different spaces, places, people, and activities? What types of material are there? How are different types used? Type up your notes logging what you heard. Then write about how the various story ideas in the episode were developed, researched, shaped, and constituted as stories? |
8/30 | 9/13 | |
| Project 1: Documentary Video Essay (2-3 min.) Drawing on sounds and images captured in 576 and 562, make a documentary video essay in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, or PowerPoint. You may capture additional images or use found images. All source images must be still frames, but you may make moves on them and add text. You must also create a soundtrack for your piece entirely from material that you yourself have recorded. |
9/13 | 9/24 | wiki |
| Project 2: Interview Assembly Edit (3-5 min.) Conduct and shoot an interview; put together an assembly edit of choice excerpts from your shoot. |
9/20 | 10/11 | DVD |
| Project 3: Process, Event, or Place (3-5 min.) Shoot and assemble a rough cut in which you document a process, event or place |
10/4 | 10/25 | DVD |
| Project 4: Final Project (5-10 min.) Ethnographic documentary that draws on course projects. Ideally, this will be either a sequence or trailer for your MA thesis project. Final Project videos screened for Anthropology Department faculty and students in the last week of fall classes. |
DVD | ||
| Project 4: Rough Cut | 11/15 | DVD | |
| Project 4: Final Edit | 12//6 | DVD | |
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Writing & Documentation |
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| Students are expected to engage the practice of writing as a way to synthesize course readings and themes and apply them in the development and production of their course and MA projects. Get into the habit of writing every weekday, if not every day, whether to reflect on work completed or to plan for upcoming projects, especially your MA project. The following coursework provides a forum in which to develop different kinds of writing that are essential to the practice of ethnographic media production and the production of your MA thesis projects. | |||
| Weekly Posts to Course Wiki Brief (300-500 word) responses to readings, screenings, and assignments unless a specific topic is assigned. Several assignments are to be submitted via the course wiki: see the course schedule for particulars. |
weekly | wiki | |
| Field/Production Notebook Field notes, brainstorming, production reports (from shoots), audio and video logs, interview transcripts, storyboards—everything related to your media projects. Should include handwritten and other documents in print and/or digital format. Binders or plastic folders, plus a field notebook, are good ways to collect and keep this material that needs to be portable. Bring your field/production notebooks to class every Monday. I will collect and review them periodically, without notice. |
on-going | mixed: wiki, print, paper and electronic documents | |
| Visual Project Proposal (append to Project Proposal done for ANTH 562).
Assignment & Guidelines (download PDF, assignment updated 11/15/2010) Develop a proposal that details how you plan to realize a 20- to 30 minute ethnographic video based on your research project. Drawing on the grant guidelines and sample documentary proposals that will be provided, develop the following as fully as possible given the logistics of your particular project. Turn in a copy of the research proposal you wrote for ANTH 562 (or your dissertation committee). Draft proposals will be returned with feedback on 11/15, two weeks before final proposals are due.
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Oct/Nov | print, email | |
| Visual Project Proposal (Draft) | 11/1 | ||
| Visual Project Proposal (Final) | 11/29 | print, email | |