Documentary Editing Seminar

With the hope of helping many filmmakers who may have time on their hands due to COVID, I’m giving away my popular seminar Editing the Character Driven Documentary (which sold for many years for $297).

Filmed live, these six 30-60 minute modules explain how to adapt screenwriting principles to documentary films.

I developed this groundbreaking work while teaching at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (#1 documentary program in the U.S.), and later at the San Francisco Film Society.

The weekend seminar was the Film Society’s most popular educational offering, selling out semester after semester for five years.

I loved seeing the look in students’ eyes as they understood how to harness the dramatic power of a carefully constructed narrative arc. When evaluation time came, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, as you can see at the end of these Testimonials.

Emmy Award-winning director Paige Bierma’s evaluation was typical:

“This class was invaluable for bringing into crystal clear focus how to adapt the Three Act Structure to a documentary film. Karen is inspiring and the documentary clips she screens are extremely useful.”

Heads up: I’m speaking a tad slowly because students were taking notes, so feel free to speed up the recording! Download the six modules for free here: Editing the Character Driven Documentary.