Jack McDonald is an Emmy Award-winning writer and director of documentary Films for National Geographic Explorer, Discovery, TLC and PBS. His films include “West Point” a PBS special, “Legendary Lighthouses of Hawaii for Oregon Public Television and PBS, “Tornado of the Century” for the Discovery Channel, “Travels of Robert Louis Stevenson” for PBS. For the Learning Channel he wrote "Great Palaces of the World", for NOVA/WGBH he wrote and co-produced “Avalanche!” For the Discovery Channel he wrote a 13-part series “The Himalaya” and for National Geographic Explorer he has written more than a dozen programs including “Surviving Everest” which received the 1994 Emmy Award for Best Historical Segment. Jack has been teaching for six seasons with high praise from his students.
Advanced Documentary Development
An extension of Jack McDonald’s Writing and Documentary Development workshop for his alumni and experienced producers.
This course, a continuation of Jack McDonald's Writing and Developing the Documentary workshop, is for those who understand the basics of the development process and want to push further into structure, storytelling, production strategies, style and writing. Students bring current projects for assessment, learn to refine their pitches, improve their treatments and polish their scripts in order to move their projects to the next level. Student filmmakers from Jack's past Advanced Development course have gone on to successfully develop projects for PBS and other networks.
Instructors
Jack McDonald