Post Civil War Documentary Project

Some Basics:

Goal is to depict the lives of a group of Americans that characterized life in the U.S. in the 30 years after the Civil War
You will conduct research that gives you a better sense of their hopes and dreams, daily routine, political interests, cultural/religious lives, etc.
From this research you will script out this documentary
Time limit: 4-5 minutes. This is absolute!
Make sure it is on a DVD or VHS that will play in a DVD player/VCR, the other option is to create a high quality QuickTime movie or Windows Media File and bring it in on a CD/DVD or flash drive

Documentary Format:

First Person interviews - use group members to play “actual people” from the time period
Still images with narration - see Ken Burns Civil War or Baseball, this can be very effective
Interviews with experts - again, use group members to play your experts (college professors, museum curators, etc.)
“historical” footage (you reenact scenes from their lives)

Documentary Topics (Your group will be assigned one of these - all occur between 1865-1900):

Your Research:

You will each need extensive notes on your topic, please identify the source that you got each set of notes from (kind of like an informal works cited)
Use the textbook to get you started
Then take what you've learned and do more specific research from other books, documentaries, and online sources (like EBSCO Host or Shmoop’s US History site)

Project Timeline:

10/14-18: Research
10/19-21: Script Writing and Rehearsal
10/22-28: Filming (Calendar your filming dates early, there will be 2 half hour chunks of class time given to you for this purpose)
10/29: Show Documentaries in Class

Your Grade (60 points total):