5 Days in Alabama: How A Documentary Shoot Taught Doc+ Students to Look Closer

Working alongside a professional crew, students learned that documentary filmmaking blends storytelling, research, and relationships. 

By the time our team gathered at Raleigh-Durham International Airport just before 6 a.m. on a humid Monday in June, the hardest part wasn’t waking up, it was trusting that weeks of preparation had actually prepared us.

Our small caravan carried backpacks, coffee cups, and just enough nervous excitement to keep everyone awake before sunrise. Three Duke undergraduates — David Anderson, Alexandra “Alex” Atkins, and Daphne Zhu — were joining us for their first professional documentary production as participants in Doc+, a six-week summer immersion program hosted by the Duke Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) that places students inside active documentary projects. 

The students were already working with filmmaker Elizabeth M. Webb, the 2024–2026 Lehman Brady Visiting Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and UNC–Chapel Hill, on Artificial Horizon, her feature documentary exploring the layered social, racial, and ecological histories of former plantation land tied to her family’s history in eastern Alabama. 

“Some of my most formative experiences as an artist and filmmaker have been learning alongside mentors in the field,” says Webb. “I was grateful to be able to pass on this experience to such an incredible group of students. Their participation has breathed new life into the project and reinforced that the themes of this work have resonance across identities, generations, and geographies.”

Alongside Webb and our professional film crew, we traveled to Alabama for five days of filming that became the centerpiece of the students’ summer experience. 

Just three weeks earlier, none of the students had ever worked on a documentary film set. Through Doc+, they learned how to build camera rigs, use professional sound equipment, create equipment checklists, plan shoot schedules, and navigate the endless preparation of pre-production.

Aleta Brown, a doctoral student in education from UNC-Chapel Hill participating through the Bridge Beyond Carolina program, served as the production manager. “Many different disciplines and types of expertise are involved in the making of Artificial Horizon,” Brown says. “The project brings together documentary, family histories of racial passing, and environmentalism, presenting a unique interdisciplinary experiential learning opportunity for Alex, Daphne, and David.”

When Plan Meets Reality

After arriving in Auburn, Alabama, our carefully organized production schedule gave way to the realities of documentary filmmaking. 

“The first thing we learned is that you’ve got to be ready to adapt at all times,” laughs Zhu. Every day began with carefully crafted call sheets, equipment checklists, and minute-by-minute timelines. 

Sometimes the rain rolled in just as cameras were ready. Sometimes the light shifted. Sometimes participants needed a longer break. 

Documentary, she discovered, had little patience for perfect schedules.

The students had each been paired with experienced crew members, but documentary sets, especially small ones, rarely stay confined to job descriptions. One moment they were slating takes. The next they were logging camera settings, carrying equipment across fields, recording sound, or simply being an extra set of observant eyes and willing hands. 

“Most of the time our roles were fluid,” says Zhu. “We jumped in to help whoever and whenever with whatever was needed.” 

Interdisciplinary Research and Looking Deeper

Beyond production, the students contributed to the documentary’s broader research process by supporting archival and location research, documenting interviews, and observing how historical, ecological, and genealogical questions informed decisions on making the film. It was a firsthand look at documentary as interdisciplinary research.

One afternoon we spent time with the University of Alabama’s Matthew Therrell, a dendrochronologist whose research uses tree rings to understand environmental change and the passage of time. A quiet reminder that landscapes, like people, carry memories beneath their surfaces. 

Looking at a tree, Alex later reflected, it’s easy to see only bark, branches, and leaves. What remains invisible are the decades of history held inside, waiting for someone to look more closely. 

The team interviewed a landowner whose views on family, race, history, and the South often challenged those around him. It would have been easy to reduce him to his most controversial opinions. Instead, the students witnessed another lesson in documentary ethics. “Initially, our clashing viewpoints made me write him off as one-dimensional,” Alex says. “But the more I spoke to him, the more I discovered that he was far from simple. He contained volumes, and underlined the value of digging deeper.” 

Documentary Is Relational

As filming continued, another lesson emerged. 

“Documentary is relational,” Zhu says. 

The students realized that documentary isn’t just about pointing a camera at someone. It’s about building the trust that allows a story to unfold in the first place.

Relationships shaped every aspect of the shoot and trip: among crew members working long days together, with participants sharing their personal experiences, and between people and landscapes that held generations of history. 

On our final full day, we drove across Alabama to an old-growth forest stewarded by Duke alumnus Larry Brasher (BA ’83, Ph.D. ’89), where some trees stood undisturbed for centuries. Nestled within the forest was a natural spring that, at first glance, seemed almost impossibly serene.

Standing beside the spring, Brasher traced the many lives that had intersected there: generations of the indigenous Muscogee (Creek) people, soldiers moving through the region during Andrew Jackson’s military campaigns, and countless others during the era of the Indian Removal Act and Trail of Tears, while the landscape quietly endured. 

Alex says that the experience taught her ”to never fall for the deception of simplicity.” Every tree, every conversation, every family history, every stretch of Alabama soil held more complexity than first met the eye.

What Students Carried Home

When the students returned to Durham, they brought back far more than footage.

David Anderson discovered documentary as an unexpected academic path. “I entered Duke like maybe freshmen do,” he says. “I wanted to get a degree, get a job, and get out. But ever since joining Doc+, I’ve realized that’s not really the point of life, or college more specifically. Life and college are about learning. They’re about growing as a person. And as a result of this newfound information, I have decided to pursue a Certificate in Documentary Studies so I can expand upon my knowledge.”

Zhu found confidence to pursue storytelling. “Doc+ has inspired me to be unafraid to try new things,” she says. “I came into this without having ever explored documentary or anything of the sort before, but now I’ve not only learned how to operate a camera, I’ve also learned how much being a part of hearing and telling people’s unique stories matters to me as a person and to the impact I want my career to make. I’m now hoping to pursue a Certificate in Documentary Studies, and I’m traveling with Professor Tom Rankin to work on another documentary project in Thailand this summer.” 

Atkins realized that people and places are rarely as simple as they first appear. “Shooting in Alabama taught me that nothing in life is ever really simple,” she says. “Going forward, that’s what I’ll take with me. Whether it’s stopping to appreciate golden sunlight filtering through tree leaves, keeping my mind open while meeting a new friend, or learning a new concept in class, I will know not to take it at surface level. I’ll go deeper, appreciating the complexity in documentary arts and everyday life.” 

Webb notes the students’ growth. “At the beginning of the program, I could sense the students’ excitement mixed with nerves that they were jumping into the deep end of a film production without any prior experience on set. By the end of the shoot, they were anticipating crew needs before they arose.”

For Lauren Henschel, director of programs at CDS, the experience reflects the philosophy behind Doc+. “Doc+ is built on a simple idea: the best way to learn documentary is by making documentary. From day one, they become part of professional creative teams, working alongside accomplished artists, filmmakers, photographers, and storytellers on projects that matter. They are trusted with real responsibility and immersed in the collaboration, ethics, and unpredictability that define documentary practice. Experiences like the Alabama production don’t just teach students how to make films. They shape how they think, how they work with others, and how they move through the world with greater curiosity, empathy, and care.” 

Get Involved with Doc+

Doc+ connects Duke undergraduates with professional documentary artists, filmmakers, photographers, and researchers through a six-week immersive summer experience. Students contribute to active films, exhibitions, podcasts, research, and other projects while gaining hands-on skills and mentorship.

Interested in participating as a student, serving as a project lead, or supporting the program? Keep an eye out for when applications open in Spring 2027, or email cdsdocplus@duke.edu.

DaManuel Richardson, is the senior program coordinator at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and a producer on Artificial Horizon. He traveled with the Doc+ cohort during the film’s June production in Alabama.