HOLIDAY DIARIES
Ages 18-29
Fall 2016, JHU-MICA Film Center

In this digital filmmaking workshop, student fellows will collaborate with volunteer elders to make a series of documentary shorts related to the holiday season. The workshop will launch before Thanksgiving and finish after New Year's.  Holidays are great times to explore traditions, expectations, and (often conflicting) emotions. Working in small, cross-generational teams, participants will shape their ideas into films using video diaries, interviews, and free archival footage. In order to craft films with intimacy and impact, fellows will shoot with cell phones and small cameras both during workshop meetings and on their own.  In-class discussion will address how to develop a story from a concept and how to work with deeply personal footage.  Fellows will expand digital storytelling and general communication skills, and learn hands-on editing, using Adobe Premiere.  They will have full authority over what parts of their stories are told.  Films will be featured on the program website and be shared at a program-wide screening in late spring.  Limited to 12 student fellows.

Annette Porter is a documentary filmmaker and co-founder, with Helen Morell, of Nylon Films, UK.  Comfortable with her camera in a corporate boardroom or on a high altitude trail in Chile, she produces, directs, and shoots both stills and moving images.

Terrence Nelson is a producer for TV One's "NewsOne Now" and a freelance journalist.  The Morgan State University graduate has worked on projects with major media outlets, such as TV One, CNN, NY Daily News, Netflix, NBC, and MTV.

Jessica Pettiford is an undergraduate in the Screenwriting and Animation (SWAN) program at Morgan State University. She hopes to improve her own skills in filmmaking and animation while working with others and helping them learn something new.