Workshops
Get a real-world guide on the process for shooting and producing your documentary
There are no available registration dates at this time.
This workshop explores all aspects of beginning, shaping, and making a documentary. You’ll examine documentary genres and shooting styles as you consider where your idea best lives and what makes your project unique. Step-by-step, you’ll learn how documentaries are written, beginning with a simple one-sentence logline that captures your idea, then learn how to craft an outline/structure for your documentary that helps assess, shape, and refine your story while discovering your own storytelling style.
You’ll follow up with designing a look and visual style for your project that lets you execute the shooting plan in a way that best fits the story.
Gain a real-world view of the essentials of how to develop, budget, shoot, and fund your project. We’ll look at how to best research and plan your material, understand interview strategies and tips, and explore documentary funding and distribution fundamentals to help you get your project off the ground.
We will also screen clips from some of the most compelling and intriguing documentaries of our time, analyzing their subjects, cinematography, and storylines to stimulate discussion about how to focus and structure your story.
This week is for beginning filmmakers, directors, writers, and producers, or anyone interested in the essentials of how to make a short or feature-length documentary.
In addition to being offered on an individual basis, this workshop is also part of the 4-week Nonfiction Cinematography Series.
Share This
Instructor: Eric Mofford
As a filmmaker, producer, line producer and consultant, Eric Mofford has worked in both documentary and narrative films and series. He has been involved in over 150 film, television and web productions as well as numerous music videos and commercials. His credits include the Emmy-winning television series 24 and the iconic indie feature, Daughters of the Dust. Recently he served as Head of Production at Lone Wolf Media overseeing documentary projects for NOVA, Nat Geo, Animal Planet, Smithsonian Channel and PBS. Recent projects include Tigre Gente, an award-winning theatrical documentary on jaguar poaching, G.S.W. (Gun Shot Wound) for Sun Mountain Films/Netflix, Becoming Nobody, a theatrical feature documentary on the end of life teachings of guru Ram Dass, Puckland, an Emmy-nominated documentary series for NBCSports.com , and America’s Hidden Stories for the Smithsonian Channel, a series he also helped to develop. Previously, Mofford served as Head of Production at Lady of the Canyon where he produced projects such as the dramatic television pilot, Finding Hope, with Chris Mulkey, James Morrison, Darby Stanchfield and Molly Quinn; and the comedy documentary, We’ll Always Have Dingle, shot in Kerry County, Ireland. He also served as Head of Production at Unconventional Media, producing the Emmy-nominated award-winning documentary, Houston We Have A Problem, and the live action portions for the EA video game, Need For Speed: Undercover, with Maggie Q. Mofford, a member of the DGA, has written and directed projects for Disney Interactive, Saban Entertainment, The Discovery Channel, Image America, United Way and TBS. He co-produced Senior Year, a 13-part PBS documentary series on high school. He has sold two feature film screenplays and has various projects in development. His dramatic blues film, Travelin’ Trains, won a dozen national and international film festival awards and continues to play in art museum showcases over 25 years later. He has done schedules and budgets for both large studio productions and small indies and has shared that knowledge teaching numerous media workshops, both in the United States and internationally.
