Welcome to the Hap|Ography Anthology of Human Happiness

The Hap|Ography Anthology is a unique, interdisciplinary film and media project initially conceived of, and newly designed in, spring 2023 during my first semester teaching FILM 311: Documentary Production. Students are guided to visually answer the open-ended question what is happiness? by observing and capturing vertical video that documents “happiness” from the subjective vantage point of the filmmaker. The first iteration of the project, combined documentary film theory, positive psychology, spirituality, digital humanities, art history and cinematic arts with contemporary research about the rapid surge of TikTok consumers and content creators using new, albeit now ubiquitous, advancements in personal smartphone camera tools with professional-grade capabilities. At present, documentary students, teaching assistants and faculty observe and capture vertical “happiness” and also spend extensive time working in the film edit lab: downloading, sifting and sorting through potential “happiness” footage. From there, participants are guided to curate their collection of videos into haplographic moments, and dittographic moments, of vertical motion picture happiness (often stacked/composited horizontal archival footage combined into one vertical video). Ultimately, each moment of curated vertical video is archived as a HAP|OGRAPH: a document of human happiness that is added to the filmmaker’s collection and then reviewed for inclusion in The Hap|Ography Anthology of Human Happiness.