Emerging Filmmakers use iPad to Create & Shoot at HotDocs Film Festival

HotDocs Film Festival is North America's largest documentary film festival, conference and market. It presents it's 22nd annual edition from April 23- May 3, 2015 in Toronto. Over 210 documentaries from around the world will be screened to the public as well as international delegates in the film industry. Hot Docs also includes a hefy roster of industry conference sessions and events. 

This year, emerging filmmakers will have the opportunity to apply their learning through an innovative documentary storytelling and film production workshop. Participants will conceive of and shoot micro docs at and around the 2015 Festival on the iPad. 

“Hot Docs is dedicated to nurturing the next generation of documentary storytellers though innovative, hands on training, such as The Film from the Future‘story jam’ workshop,” said Elizabeth Radshaw, Hot Docs’ industry programs director. “With its unparalleled iSight camera, performance capability, and wide selection of creativity apps, iPad Air 2 is the perfect device to create and shoot these micro docs. Powerful, nimble, accessible and dynamic, iPad is so easy to use, and already a part of our daily lives.”

Developed in collaboration with the Situation Lab at OCAD University, Hot Docs’ The Film from the Future is a documentary ‘story jam’ driven by a card game of the same name, designed by the Lab's directors Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson. "We created the game to help storytellers and designers wrap their imaginations around how the world could change," explained Candy, a futurist and professor of Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD U. "And emerging documentary filmmakers are the ideal creative agents to bring those futures to life." The Film from the Future game will challenge and enable participants to generate ideas for various micro docs set decades or more from today, and in doing so, learn principles of documentary storytelling and story design. For this second consecutive year of Situation Lab collaboration with Hot Docs, teams will form around these concepts, which they will then shoot on iPad at and around the 2015 Hot Docs Festival.

In addition to The Film from the Future ‘story jam’ workshop, emerging filmmakers will also participate in additional sessions on story creation and technical training, including an iPad-focused seminar led by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Tristan Pope, who is renowned for shooting films entirely on iPhone. During the shooting process, teams will share their progress and experiences via social media, and the final micro docs will be made available online at www.hotdocs.ca and on iTunes at iTunes.com/hotdocs.