This guide offers filmmakers, journalists, digital storytellers, and educators practical and proven strategies for non-extractive, community-engaged video production.

Drawing from years of community partnerships and experiential learning projects, Best Practices for Non-Extractive and Non-Intrusive Community-Engaged Video Production equips filmmakers, journalists, digital storytellers, and educators to create non-extractive meaningful, and lasting collaborations. The book emphasizes approaches that prioritize transparency, reciprocity, and community ownership of narratives. Unlike conventional approaches to production, this book positions communities not as participants, but as co-creators in the storytelling process.

This guide is designed to help students and practitioners approach digital storytelling in ways that are ethical, collaborative, and respectful of communities.

Structured around the full production cycle, from pre-production to post-production and community screenings, it equips readers with tools for building non-extractive partnerships and designing non-intrusive production processes that center community voices.

The guide also engages emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, demonstrating how such tools can be responsibly integrated while centering community voices without distorting their stories or misrepresenting them.

Whether you are a documentary filmmaker, oral historian, educator, or media professional, this book is an essential resource and toolkit for anyone committed to non-extractive, community-engaged storytelling in an age of rapid technological change.