The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 129
Confessions of a Teacher
”Documentarists” and ”Fictionalists” – thoughts
about selecting students for a documentary course
David Wingate
These notes are the result of a conversation with Richard Raskin in
northern Finland in November of last year. We talked about what
distinguishes documentary student filmmakers from fiction students.
He asked me to write down some of my thoughts as an article for POV.
For five years in the early nineties I ran a documentary course in
Norway. It was at the regional High School in Volda and lasted one
academic year. We thought of it as a third year course, because
applicants had to have done at least two years of media studies at
university level and have at least a year of professional production
experience. Selecting students for this course presented some interesting
problems.
The course was getting a huge number of applications. This was
part of the over-inflated interest among young people for media
courses of all kinds and the growth of media education to cope with
and exploit this “market.” But how to find the right ones among all
these applicants?
We were not allowed by the high school system to interview
applicants, but with the Volda media department's approval, we
short-listed about three times as many students as there were places
for on the course and sent them written tasks to do. The results of
these tasks then determined who was offered a place.