film, video & TV training | professional development

Discipline/s:	production | writing & directing
Level:	Advanced
Course code:	VJ109
Date/s & times:	Register your interest
Contact hours:	40
Places:	10 (strictly limited)
Fee:	$740 OC members / $840 non members (Membership: $55 / $44 concession - join Open Channel here)
Prerequisites:	Some previous journalistic or documentary experience preferred

This unique course equips journalists and filmmakers with the necessary skills to tell compelling, timely stories as a single person crew.

Working as a single person crew can be the most effective way to capture unfolding stories.  It is also one of the most demanding and failure-prone ways to work. 

This course focuses entirely on ‘hard’, short, reporter-driven stories, rather than longitudinal or character-driven documentary.

With cross-media skills in increasing demand in Australia and abroad, this is an unusual opportunity to be guided by an esteemed professional to make sound technical, creative and ethical decisions in the field, on your own.

You will learn how to:

• Identify appropriate stories
• Conduct research and plan a shoot
• Use camera, sound, and light
• Shoot sequences, cutaways and general vision
• Set up and shoot interviews, including noddies
• Use Final Cut Pro
• Write and record voice-over

Participants should be prepared to shoot a story (1-2 days) outside of course hours.  You will team up in Reporter/Producer pairs for additional support and feedback.  Participants will be entitled to 50% discounted hire (subject to availability) on Open Channel equipment for their shoots. All stories completed by Feb 5 will be screened to a News Producer.

Enrolment in this course is selective by application.  Please contact shortcourses@openchannel.org.au or 03 8610 9300 for an enrolment form.

Who should do this course?
This course is suitable for journalists new to audiovisual production, and for factual filmmakers wishing to gain skills in short-form.

Tutor
Carmela Baranowska has worked in East Timor since1999, freelancing for SBS TV News,  ABC Radio, Radio Nether- lands, 3AW, Al Jazeera and for Dateline, SBS Television’s flagship video journalism program. Carmela won a Rory Peck Award for the film Scenes from an Occupation in 2000. 

"I was filming and sound recording by myself... working as a one-person crew meant that I had to be close to what was happening. I wanted to be closely connected to  people and events, to be in the middle of any given situation - however difficult, dramatic or humorous.”

Carmela’s reporting from Afghanistan won her a Walkley Award in 2004. Taliban Country investigated US Marine operations in Oruzgan province.  Walkley judges described the story as “an exceptionally courageous report and a wonderful piece of digicam journalism. Baranowska showed great determination and courage...”

Carmela has a Grad Dip in documentary from the VCA School of Film and Television.  Currently, Carmela is com- pleting a practice-based PhD with the topic “The Gun and The Mirror: Human Rights, Filmmaking and Journalism in Burma, East Timor, Indonesia 1993-2008.”