This week, the new generation of students from the Distance Learning program M.A. Visual and Media Anthropology were live on Berlin campus and attended a series of in-house workshops.
The sessions on documentary photography, immersive storytelling, and transcultural film (including courses on camera work, sound design, and editing) took place in hybrid form. This allowed students who were not present on site to participate in the courses via Zoom.
The teachers Felix Gaedke and Gayatri Parameswaran introduced the students to the fascinating and promising field of immersive storytelling. As co-founders of Nowhere Media, an award-winning company that produces immersive documentaries, they already bring a great deal of practical experience in this field. Among other topics, the course addressed best practices for immersive storytelling in the context of current technological advances. Through case studies, students learned about different workflows for producing virtual and augmented reality works. At the beginning of the course, workshop participants also had the opportunity to experience selected works for themselves on virtual reality headsets.
In further practical workshops, the students had the chance to get their hands on the camera and audio equipment themselves and to be creative. Prof. Nora Bibel introduced them to the world of documentary photography and showed them how to visualize topics and content using an individual visual language. In the middle of the week, they learned everything about sound recording from lecturer Dr. Gilles Aubry and were able to gain new insights and deepen their knowledge in the camera and film editing workshops held by Mark Dölling and Prof. Dr. Roger Horn.
All in all, what a successful, fun and productive workshop week! We wish all VMA students a good start to their studies and look forward to welcoming them to the next in-house workshops on campus.
Photos: Daniel Wood, Heike Philp
