Video journalism/Script a documentary

To write a high quality documentary script, you retain intellectual property, while building on and developing the complex issues of representation and attribution learnt in the earlier assignments based in news and current affairs.

Continue to develop the project and topic you started as a news story, earlier in this learning Schedule. Do so in terms of this assignment and the readings in the Topics, the Internet resources and the script example template in the Resources (Script Example, Cinéma Vérité / Direct Cinema, 'Delinquent Angel' Documentary). While the formatting has gone astray in some places as it was converted to a PDF (I will fix this), the script is a good example as to how to set out a film script that might be used for seeking funds, or providing an editor as they sit down to go through all the material you have acquired to build a film.

Cite a range of sources to support your script and remember that a documentary is a complex narrative that takes the line usually, of an argument, as a scholarly thesis might. So write the theoretical argument into the script, through the intended interviewee/s, their monologue, in dialogue, by way of voice over narration or actor driven dialogue. You could use any of the characters that may emerge in your materials, both in video and print.

Ultimately, you are required to provide a discussion, a through line, of the video material, the reference papers and any background readings that you have brought to the film project. This material now must be reworked into a coherent a script based narrative.

You should couple references with other references, insights or experiences, and discuss what is behind the production in terms of style and genre within documentary film — make this transparent in the script.

All this should be done using interviewees and events — real or fictional — of the documentary form. Keep the response simple, dont get bogged down in some of our reference materials apparent complexity or precociousness.

Resources

How to write a documentary script

Documentary script templates

In search of the dragon's tale - Example documentary script

Triumph of the will - Example propaganda documentary script

Screenwriters Utopia

How to write a script for documentary