This document introduces the key concepts and assignments for a course on participatory documentaries. The course will focus on the relationships between documentary films, online communities, and social media. Students will be asked to create a documentary about a real-world community and use social media to share it. They will consider what community to feature, how to represent it authentically, and how to disseminate the documentary online. The instructor emphasizes using social platforms like blogs and Twitter to both produce and distribute the works.

1. TRANSIENT SPACES 2012
Introduction
JENNY WEIGHT,
SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION, 25/02/2012
RMIT

2. THE TS TRIANGLE
• This course is about three things – documentary, community, and social media, and the
relationships between those three things.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

3. ‘COMMUNITY’
• There are a lot of theories about community, and about how it suffers at the hands of
modern society
• Another range of controversies rages about whether you can have community online (for
example, on Facebook)
• My working definition of community for the purposes of your documentary is:
• It has more than five people in it;
• It has members that other members barely or don’t
know, but they can say what they have in common;
• Even if they don’t know each other, the members
could work out a way to contact each other.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

4. ‘SOCIAL MEDIA’
• Social media uses digital networks (internet, mobile phone networks) to connect people
by allowing them to disseminate their own media to each other.
• Well-known examples include FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, discussion boards,
Yammer
• Email and blogs may also be social media, depending on how they are used.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

5. ‘DOCUMENTARY’
• A documentary tells a story about a non-fiction scenario
• It can be in any medium (audio, video, text and image)
• There are many different types of documentary.
• We will be making participatory documentaries
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

6. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TRIANGLE
• The participatory documentary that I am asking you to make inhabits the space in the
middle of the triangle.
• You will make a documentary about a community.
• You will use social media to disseminate that documentary back to the community.
• You may also use social media to produce, or help produce that documentary
• Your role is to facilitate that community to tell its own story or explore its own issue.
• If you are a member of that community,
you may include your own point of view
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

7. BUT WHAT WILL MY DOCO LOOK LIKE?
• You could, for example, publish your documentary on a blog. Then publish the separate
episodes of the documentary into FaceBook, Twitter or whatever social media the
members of the community use
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

8. WHAT COMMUNITY WILL I USE?
• You will need to analyse the communities that you know or are a member of and decide.
• We will do exercises in the tutes about it
• There are a few criteria that will make some communities a better subject than others, for
example:
• There are strong personalities you could interview
• You can think of a good issue to explore or story to tell
• You have quite a few contacts within that community
• You know what social media those contacts use.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

9. ASSESSMENT
• All the assessment aims to assist in the creation of your documentary.
• The learning contract is where you spell out exactly what documentary you are going to
make. This gives me a chance to trouble shoot what you are planning. I may ask you to
re-write parts of it. So long as you cooperate, everyone should get a high mark for the
learning contract. You can’t start production of your documentary until I sign off on your
learning contract
• The documentary is due in class in the Week 12 screening. It must be published on the
web in social media by then. Assessment is based on how well you have delivered the
things you promised in the learning contract.
• The blog / Twitter assessment is designed for you to demonstrate your skills in social
media and reflect upon your experience of, and issues faced, while making the
documentary. It should reflect the research you have done during the course. Conquering
blogging and Tweeting should help you disseminate your doco.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

10. THE COOKBOOK
I am making a ‘text book’ called the Participatory Documentary Cookbook. We will be going
through this in the lecture next week. You will be able to download a copy for yourselves.
A few other resources will also be
available from MyRMIT Studies for
this course.
Lecture notes and observations
will be on my blog,
www.geniwate.com
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

11. SO, THAT’S IT?
• Yes
• But the devil is in the detail. Over coming
weeks we have a lot to flesh out.
The Devil in the Detail by
Tim Green aka atoach on
Flickr.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

12. FAQS
• Do I have to do video?
• Definitely not. In fact, if you’ve never done video before, I will do my best to dissuade you.
Text and image is fine. Perhaps a little audio.
• What production tools will I use?
• Domestic gear is fine, such as a pocket digital camera, a mobile phone. To record voice, I
can teach you how to use the School’s audio recorders (they are called Xooms). I will not
be teaching video shoot skills in this course.
• What about software?
• You can use any software that you already own. There is also some software in the labs
that you can use. And lots and lots of software that is free or very cheap on the internet.
Much more on this in the Cookbook.
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

13. WORDS OF WARNING
• Most people get focused on their doco and don’t put enough attention into their blog /
Twitter. Remember, the assessment period for your blog / Twitter starts in week 2. You
need to have conquered sufficient skills in blogging and tweeting in the first two weeks of
class. Then put it in your calendar, you need to do it several times a week.
• Read the learning contract now. People usually under-estimate how much work there is.
• If you don’t already know, learn to find the course documents on MyRMIT Studies
• Bookmark the Transient Spaces category on my blog (geniwate.com)
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

14. A PARTICIPATORY DOCUMENTARY
• Hair we Go (Short Documentary) by D.I.S GUISE
( http://vimeo.com/21727900)
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

15. TUTE 1 CHECKLIST: COMMUNITIES
• Analyse the communities you belong to using the contacts in your phone, email lists,
FaceBook friends, etc
• Take diary notes of an issue or event they are talking about
• Consider the logistics of any possible documentary theme that arises
• Write about it in your blog
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

16. TUTE 1 CHECKLIST: BLOGS
Do you know how to:
• Post an entry
• Put links in your blog
• Embed other media in your blog (video, image, audio)
• Choose a different theme for your blog
Have you made a note of everyone else’s blog url in the course
• Put their blog in your RSS Feed (Google Reader)
• Followed their blog
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

17. TUTE 1 CHECKLIST: TWITTER
Have you:
• Set up your Twitter account
• Swapped Twitter @ names with everyone in the course
• Followed everyone in the course
• Decided how to read your Tweets (eg, using TweetDeck)
• Do you know how to use hashtags (course hashtag is #transpaces)
• Do you know how to Tweet an individual using their @ name
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

18. TUTE 1 CHECKLIST: STUDY BUDDIES
Missed a class? Missing some information? May need help doing your interviews? Etcetera. A
good strategies is to have a couple of class mates to call on for help.
Have you:
• Chosen two people in the course to be study buddies with
• Swapped contact details with them
Remember, this will only work out if the favours are reciprocated!
JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT

19. JENNY WEIGHT, SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND
25/02/2012
COMMUNICATION, RMIT