Documentary Studies

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A film by one of our Documentary Studies MA students, Margo McClellan: https://vimeo.com/120802591

Documentarians creatively make nonfiction stories. Whether it’s a story about historical events and people or the events of our times, documentarians produce stories that give shape and meaning to our understanding of culture, social life and history.

Our graduate program at Northern Arizona University’s School of Communication provides a solid grounding in communication and the theoretical, critical, and practical traditions that inform documentary work. Students engage in intensive research and fieldwork, professional production skills in storytelling, and learn to critically analyze media in terms of both content and craft.

The program is ideally suited to prepare graduate students for today’s world of cutting-edge multimedia journalism, documentary work, as well as preparation for PhD programs in cinema and media studies. It also provides the foundations to start a business doing production in a variety of formats.

This is the only Master’s level Documentary program in the Southwest.

Students in this program will:

• Engage a theoretical and historical understanding of documentary as rooted in the traditions of creative storytelling and social critique.
• Apply heightened skills of observation, critical thinking, and creativity in telling stories about untold, under-reported, and under-represented issues and peoples.
• Create and distribute a variety of documentary projects in different forms at an advanced level.
• Realize that production tools and techniques are a means to author a unique point of view shaped by the documentarian’s philosophical sensibilities and ways of perceiving the world.
• Gain tools for creating their own production business.