Documentary Campus - does your story serve your theme?

The obligatory screenshot of a ZOOM session reminds us all of the fate of media workshops right now. Despite everything being virtual, we managed to dig into and map out 15 projects over three days. Participants from the Documentary Campus workshop, film makers from across Europe stayed in their homes, gardens and even by the lakeside to explore the underlying questions that lie beneath and power the stories they want to tell.

My approach with these projects is to map out how these stories are being told so as to best reveal and explore each project’s theme* and how that will ultimately lead to audience transformation.

*if you want to know your theme, get someone to ask you the question “why should this film be made?” five times in a row. Make sure each answer is short and to the point and so never more than a sentence or two, max. Stick with your answer, modify it or try something new. Look back over your five answers to see which one resonates most with you and then get to work checking whether your story best serves it.