Time Schedule:
Terry J Ellingson
MUSIC 512
Seattle Campus
Deals with advanced theoretical and methodological problems in ethnomusicology, and with the relationship of ethnomusicology to allied disciplines. Prerequisite: graduate-student standing in ethnomusicology or permission of instructor.
Class description
Seminar: Field Video Techniques and Theory
Spring 2012
This is a participatory seminar in techniques and theories for the use of contemporary techniques and theories for small-format, low-budget video documentation and visualization actually used by fieldworkers in ethnomusicological, anthropological, and other field research-based disciplines in the early twenty-first century. It is not a survey of the history of famous documentary films in any specific discipline; nor is it an introduction to the production of high production-value professionalized documentaries with their typical budgets and fundraising constraints in the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dollars, employment of large specialist crews that would swamp the economy of a low-income village, or the scripting and storyboarding of "talent" who obediently follow the dictates of beret-wearing directors in canvas chairs who put the words of the film in the mouths of the supposed agents or actors. Instead, this is a class for low-budget research filmmakers, working with low-income contemporaries; whose main needs are to learn how to walk and talk like Groucho Marx, to see the world along with their friends, to find the scripting and the storyboard in the lives of those who live the story.
Students are required to purchase the class textbook and a video camcorder of any kind, from smartphone to professional level. Grade is not dependent on the level of equipment ownership.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
