ACTING & FILM SCHOOL

Documentary Filmmakers Take Advantage of New Film Course

Where do students who want to learn how to make documentaries go to school? There are many schools who teach non-fiction filmmaking, but it is rare to find one that focuses solely on the craft of documentary filmmaking. Within the last decade there have been a number of courses that have cropped up according to Independent Magazine, who rated the top ten documentary filmmaker schools in September of 2008.

Aspiring documentary filmmakers now have several reputatlble courses to earn college credit, and in some cases a degree, focused on documentary filmmaking.

The New York Film Academy’s year old Documentary Filmmaking program is chaired by Columbia alum Chair Andrea Swift. Students get to work with a camera from day one and have unprecedented access to equipment outside the classroom. Industry professionals regularly give talks to students in the course. The 2007 class had the opportunity to pitch a reality TV show to a Discovery Channel executive and to work with Emmy award-winning editor Bob Eisenhardt (The Body Human, Soldiers of Music) on their thesis films.

In 2008, a pair of August one-year documentary program grads, Annie Wood and Frederik Boll, became famous “driving the movement” in the ‘BamaBus’ while documenting their efforts with photos and a video blog. Just today, Time Magazine selected a picture from their tour among over 100,000 images on Flickr. To learn more and watch videos of the tour click here. YouTube vlogs: BamaBus 1, BamaBus 2

Also in 2008, documentary students shot and published three separate instances of policy-changing video of police brutality. A “cop-attacking-bicyclist” clip received over 500,000 views on YouTube and was replayed on every national media outlet in the country.  The clip gave birth to the NYC City Commission’s promise to create a special prosecution office to investigate charges of police brutality and was used in court to indite the charged officer.

The same student’s gripping thesis, “The Battle of St. Paul”, goes on to recount unprecedented attacks on protesters and media outside the Republican convention - and will premiere at this year’s Winter screenings. Some of the footage was bought and incorporated into New York Times best-selling author Naomi Wolf’s new doc, “The End of America“, now in release.

Students also shot the police charge on the Iraq Veterans Against the War at the Long Island Presidential debate which culminated in a police horse stomping on one of the veterans’ heads.  That clip was instrumental in getting charges dropped against the veterans.

2008 has proven to be a very successful year for students of the New York Film Academy’s Documentary Filmmaking program. Visit our Documentary Filmmaking Course page to see what is in store for 2009.