The Playback
Introducing The Playback, a new digital series from The Video Consortium premiering April 6. Every other Thursday, we will take you behind the scenes of your favorite nonfiction storytelling, from feature docs to the Washington Post's viral TikTok account. Each episode will explore a different element of our craft, including access, animation, sound design & more.
The case for documentary sound design.
There’s a mainstream expectation in nonfiction storytelling that sound has to be “real”, but the filmmakers behind “A Woman’s Place” prove that sound can also show us emotional truth--what is happening in a way we can't experience in real life or real time. This is the case for documentary sound design.
How cinematographer David Bolen changed the game for documentaries.
Chances are, if you watched a documentary lately and had to ask who shot THAT? It’s probably David Bolen. In the latest episode of The Playback, go behind the scenes of the cinematography in Lance Oppenheim’s candy-colored debut feature, Some Kind of Heaven.
How Mac Premo found his style.
Mac Premo is a filmmaker, artist, and self-described stuff-maker with one of the most recognizable animation styles in the film industry. When asked how he developed his style, Premo reminds us that an artist’s voice is found. You can’t seek it.
They’re a world-class newspaper. They’re also TikTok famous.
Meet Carmella Boykin, a journalist and TikTok producer at the Washington Post. During the pandemic, the newspaper launched their now-viral TikTok account, and is changing the way that news is covered on the social internet.
This couple turned the nature documentary on its head.
Cinematographers Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden turned the nature documentary on its head in their directorial debut, the awards season darling, Nuisance Bear. The film explores how we share space with animals from the perspective of one cheeky polar bear.
They heiled Trump. Now they’re mainstream.
In 2016, filmmaker Daniel Lombroso caught Trump supporters heiling the president-elect’s victory on camera. After the clip went viral, Lombroso embedded himself in alt-right circles and documented the ascent of white nationalism in what became his debut feature, White Noise.
Inside the New York Times investigation of January 6th.
As thousands of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2020, the New York Times Visual Investigations team collected hundreds of hours of real-time footage, painstakingly reconstructing the event in this Pulitzer Prize-winning play-by-play of perhaps the world’s best documented crime scene.
How Kamala Harris's video producer got the shot.
She worked on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Then Yang’s. And Bernie’s. Then Harris’s again. Learn how video producer Yessica Hernandez-Cruz got the shot.
The only night club open during lockdown.
When Covid-19 shut down clubs around the world, filmmaker Aurora Brachman found community in Club Quarantine, a queer dance party that took place every night over Zoom. Brachman soon became a regular, and spent two months interviewing her fellow partygoers-turned-friends for “Club Quarantine”, a raw, vulnerable portrait of intimacy and connection at a moment when it felt impossible.