Image Credit Southern Oregon University Digital Cinema Program
On February 11th at 1:00 PM in the Britt Hall Student Lounge, the Communication, Media, and Cinema program will be hosting an information session about the Certificate in Documentary Production. The Siskiyou sat down with Dr. Christopher Lucas, who has a background in documentary production and teaches documentary classes at SOU, to talk about the details for this upcoming event.
When asked what a documentary certificate is, Dr. Lucas said, “It’s a way for SOU to show that the student has taken advanced training in documentary filmmaking and they have specialized knowledge in something like outdoor adventure leadership or political science or environmental science, giving them the skills to create documentaries in those areas.”
The purpose of this event is to help students get the information they need to get certified. Dr. Lucas has provided the Siskiyou with a link that shows a list of classes that students who are looking to become documentarians will need to take in order to be certified by the school. Students take three program prerequisite classes in Production Tools for six credits. After that, they take 36 credits in required production courses, and 12 credits in a disciplinary area. Dr. Lucas said the program is fairly easy for digital cinema students to complete. “A lot of the credits for the documentary certificate overlap with our requirements in digital cinema. So if you are already working towards a digital cinema major, you can probably easily move over and add the documentary certificate to your program.”
For those planning on attending this event, here is what Dr. Lucas said you should expect: “The information session is going to explain the program, the credits you need, and the courses you will need to take. We’ll talk about the partner disciplines that we’ve connected with, such as Criminal Justice, Environmental Science, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, History, Native American Studies, Outdoor Adventure Leadership, Sociology and Anthropology program (SOAN), and Political Science.” According to Dr. Lucas, you will choose one of those eight and take some of the courses those programs offer alongside your Digital Cinema courses in order to get certified. If you double major in any of those, alongside digital cinema, you are probably already on track and might not even realize it.
With registering for spring classes just around the corner, we had asked Dr. Lucas what sort of documentary filming classes are going to be offered in the spring. Some of them were DCIN 472A, Advanced Documentary, and also Production Tools courses such as DCIN 101, which focuses on audio equipment, and DCIN 102 which focuses on DSLR cameras, for those that need to get their prerequisites done.
For those who are interested in making documentaries and/or becoming a digital cinema major in order to make documentaries, the Communication, Media & Cinema department’s upcoming event on documentary certification is an event worth attending. The event will be held on Friday, February 11th at 1:00 PM in Britt Hall. Below is a flyer for the event.
