The Southern Documentary Project
TEACHING THE NEXT GENERATION OF STORYTELLERS
Congrats to Tyler Keith, Eric Griffis, and Meghan Leonard–Southern Studies grad. students whose film on the Brown Family Dairy was featured in the New York Times today with a wonderful article on the Brown family. This film came out of the Documentary Fieldwork class that we taught last spring with David Wharton at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
Here are some pics from the Filmmaking Workshop that Micah and I have been teaching this week. The class was a whirlwind experience in filmmaking, covering things like camera, lighting, sound, acting, directing and screenwriting; culminating in a final short scene that the class filmed in three different groups. Pictured are some of the students conferring with their storyboards and setting up their shots. Special thanks goes out to Karen Tuttle and Chris Williams who stepped up huge today and played the actors for each of the three scenes. Everybody worked really hard today getting their film in the can. Now all that’s left to do is edit and pop up the popcorn. Check back soon for the finished scenes.
– Matthew
Here’s the final cut of the short film that Matthew Graves produced last weekend for the student film workshop. As a side note, if you were able to catch “Slumdog Millionare” you might recognize the low-rent version of their credit sequence used at the end. Jai Ho!
This Saturday, producer Matthew Graves instructed a film class for a few Ole Miss Law School professors’ kids. In the 3 hour class they went over a few principles of filmmaking like composition and storyboarding, focusing on the art of a chase scene in a movie. The class then produced a short film using the techniques they learned. Here’s a pic from the short. Check back next week to view the finished film.