Behind the documentary: Creating a DVD teaching tool for video production students

This production thesis focuses on creating a teaching tool for university-level students in video production. Video production instructors and students use a variety of teaching tools. Analysis of currently available tools lead to the development of Behind the Documentary. The Behind the Documentary DVD illustrates some common problems encountered in documentary production. The DVD is designed to serve as a supplement to a student's course material. In addition to having visual examples for students, it is also important that the examples are authentic and meaningful. Therefore, the examples were based on lessons learned from producing the 60-minute television documentary Inside Jazz: Everybody's Welcome. Behind the Documentary provides insight into how a real documentary was created. It is a unique, behind the scenes look at documentary production that provides a real-world context for some of the concepts that are taught in video production courses.