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Documentary Outreach Colombia.
Four weeks on location in Santa Marta. You research, film, and edit a short documentary in direct collaboration with a locally-led changemaker organisation.
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Four weeks on location in Santa Marta. You research, film, and edit a short documentary in direct collaboration with a locally-led changemaker organisation.
The Destination
Santa Marta is Colombia's oldest city, built between the Caribbean coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The mountains drop into the sea here. The jungle begins almost immediately behind the city. Santa Marta has been shaped by indigenous communities, the legacy of the drug trade, displacement, and a generation of Colombians who decided to stay and build something.
That tension is still present, and it is productive. Santa Marta has one of the most active networks of locally-led social enterprises and nonprofits in the country, organisations working on environmental conservation, indigenous rights, women's economic inclusion, and community resilience. They are not accustomed to international attention. They are doing the work regardless of whether anyone documents it.
Four weeks on location, working directly with one of those organisations on a documentary that matters to the people in it. In your time off, the Caribbean is minutes away, Tayrona National Park is close enough for a day trip, and the city itself rewards the kind of wandering that makes better filmmakers.
What's Included
$4,800
USD per person · accommodation included
Cost does not include round-trip airfare, visa, personal meals, or travel insurance. Travel insurance is required.
Week By Week
Over four weeks in Santa Marta, you move through every stage of documentary production. Each week builds on the last.
Week One
You arrive and get straight to work. From the first day, the crew is in the field: briefings, screenings, hands-on exercises, and time spent with the people and places you will eventually film. You are not assigned a story. You go looking for one. By the end of the week you have a protagonist and a story you want to spend the next three weeks telling.
Week Two
Turn what you have learned into a working plan. With your crew you shape the story, build an outline, and map out how it will be told. Before moving into the main film, you produce a short micro-documentary together. You learn how your crew communicates, makes decisions, and works under pressure before the stakes get higher.
Week Three
You are in it. Filming real life as it unfolds, working with your storyholder and collaborators, making creative decisions in the field as things shift around you. Each evening, the crew reviews the day's work, gets feedback, and adjusts. The story begins to take shape.
Week Four
You bring it together. From rough cut to picture lock, with the Production Manager alongside you the whole way. The film screens publicly at the end of the trip, for the community and for the people who trusted you with their story. You leave with a finished documentary and a production process you can lead on your next project.
From Past Crew
I think I learned more in those three weeks than I did all of the last two semesters in university. I really liked having the opportunity to play multiple roles in the movie making process that I might not have been able to try anywhere else.
Samuel Scott
Documentary Outreach · Guatemala
I'm not the same person going out of it as I was going in. The work is hard. The relationships you build — with your crew and with your storyholders — are real. I didn't expect that.
Rosie Robinson
Documentary Outreach · Vietnam
I started with little experience in film production and came away feeling confident to pursue this as a career, thanks to a comprehensive and rigorous training process.
Samuel Mitchell
Documentary Outreach · Belize, 2019
Documentary Outreach Application
Step 1 of 4
Select one or both. You can be considered for multiple programs.
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Step 2 of 4
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Step 3 of 4
Help us understand your comfort level and how you like to work.
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A few optional links and one last question.
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