Course Overview
Documentary filmmaking can be challenging whether you’re just getting started or have some experience in the field. This 2-day graduate level certificate workshop will guide you through all the stages of producing a successful documentary, with tips and strategies on the essentials of independent documentary filmmaking for both short and feature-length films. The course will include an overview of documentary film financing, story development, production essentials from shooting to the final edit, creative marketing, and strategies for distribution.
Course Outcomes
After successful completion of this course, you will have the knowledge and skills to:
- Assess the suitability of story ideas for documentary storytelling
- Identify diverse resources for documentary film funding
- Understand the fundamentals of budgeting, treatment writing, and scheduling
- Employ strategies for working with documentary film subjects
- Plan for the stages of postproduction, including editing, working with music, color grading, and sound mix
- Be knowledgable about and consider a wide range of distribution methods
Who Should Attend?
Documentary Filmmaking is ideal for those new to documentary filmmaking, videographers, film producers, content creators, journalists, editors, new media managers, media professionals, content marketers, communications and PR, publishers, and educators.
Gail S.Terrific! Sheleece is a remarkably engaging instructor who was able to maintain our attention through lots of material. The class worked because it was so well organized and she was so skilled and inspiring.
Director
Martha W.I greatly appreciate Shaleece's breadth and depth of the materials we covered in the past two days. More importantly, her openness to all of our questions regarding her impressive Real Boy film was very welcomed. She has the unusual ability to make complex issues simplified.
Freelancer
Victoria F.Very thorough. I felt that I'm able to take this back to current & future projects. The resources alone were a gift!
Assistant Editor
Instructors & Facilitators
Instructors subject to change.
Shaleece Haas
Shaleece Haas is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and a director based in Los Angeles. Her films, marked by a balance of poignancy and humor, invite audiences deep into the interior worlds of their protagonists. TEXAS STRONG, a film she produced in 2018, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary and premiered at SXSW. Her 2016 film REAL BOY screened in 23 countries, earned 20 festival awards, and was broadcast nationally on PBS’ Independent Lens. Shaleece also co-produced THE GENIUS OF MARIAN (2013; Tribeca Film Festival, POV) and the final episode of ASIAN AMERICANS, a landmark historical series for PBS (2020), and was a consulting producer on POV’s first limited series, AND SHE COULD BE NEXT (2020; Tribeca Film Festival, POV). She is currently producing Julie Wyman’s UNTITLED DWARFISM PROJECT, a film about the Little People community’s response to new drugs promising to make children born with dwarfism taller.
Her films have received support from IDA Enterprise Fund, ITVS, California Humanities, Berkeley Film Foundation, IFP, Film Independent, and Fledgling Fund, among others. Shaleece is an Impact Partners Documentary Producing Fellow, a Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow, and a Working Films Fellow. She is an alumna of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and was a founding staff member of the national oral history project StoryCorps.
Tuition
$695 USD
We encourage team work! Bring a colleague or friend and receive additional tuition discounts. Contact Alexandre Bui at alexandre.bui@berkeley.edu for more information.
Prerequisites
Requirements
- The workshop is a beginning graduate-level workshop. Please contact us if you have questions about the pace or content.
- Participants must be comfortable with technical subjects and learning in a fast-paced environment.
- Proficiency in English.