Unlocking the Moviemaking Mind
Page 4
a lesson plan I will seek it out of curiosity.
If the relevance of a video camera and its visual insights is truly and
only a novelty, then it can be expected to last at least until the next
novelty arrives to take its place.
Kinetics.
But there is the chance that the relevance factor is fueled
by something else as well: the action—call it kinetics—of the production
process.
I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
—Confucius
Videomaking has a strong kinetic quality to it from the physical activity
of operating it to the fairly laborious process of conceiving it. It also adds kinetic quality to its subject matter, by incorporating moving image media into a topic. A video, like a paper, is idea driven and when that idea is connected to a lesson plan, it adds kinetic energy to it. With kinetic energy comes the opportunity for relevance.
Familiarity.
One other aspect behind videomaking’s tendency to
bring relevance to subject matters it is associated with is its familiarity.
Children born in the past four or five decades basically grow up with
moving image media all around them from birth. It is a familiar, thus
relevant, part of the world they know and live in. Children learn to
“read” television in their infancy, and arrive to kindergarten visually
literate in terms of television watching. When they learn the alphabet,
they are gaining a comparatively new literacy in print media.
But most classrooms current K-12 students reside in are not equipped
with or outfitted for the free and easy use of visual media. Some of this
has to do with the fact that school districts do not have unlimited re-
sources and must make hard choices about what they can and cannot
equip classrooms with. Another part of it has to do with technological
inertia and the fact that teachers are not prepared to deal with additional media resources. Teachers are more skilled and comfortable with traditional learning resources and relatively slow to adapt to new ways of
teaching that involve unfamiliar tools, such as video cameras. There is
also a psychological resistance of sorts when it comes to the comfort level of teachers using popular media like television and film (let alone cameras) because of residual skepticism in the educational community con-
cerning the use of popular media forms in the classroom.
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So, when cameras occasionally appear in these environments they
look more like environments outside of classrooms and are therefore
more relevant to the world children know outside of their classrooms.
Classroom Case Studies in Relevance: Football
Videomaking is certainly not the only relevant element in K-12 stu-
dents’ lives, and we often witnessed examples of good teachers exploring
the challenge of relevance in innovative ways. We were actually working
with students on a video project when something even more relevant
than the videomaking activity we were involved in drew them away
from their filmmaking: football.
Sixth graders Ronnie and Tyrone were brainstorming ideas for a visu-
al story about their school when a football game began out on the play-
ground, which was tantalizingly visible from the window of the room we
were working in. As the distraction of the game drew them further away
from the task at hand, it was easy to fall prey to the instinct to bring them back to the table. But there was something about the way that they polite-ly pleaded to take a break from our creative brainstorming that we
couldn’t resist. Maybe it was the fact that it was so rare when something
competed with their attention and involvement with videomaking activ-
ities that made us curious. So we compromised and brought the video
cameras outside to record the game. Little did we know that we were not
taking a break—we were beginning production of their video story.
It turns out that their teacher, Katie DiLorenzo, regularly rewarded
her students with a football game on the playground when they earned it
in the classroom. She was the designated quarterback (dress, heels, and
all) for both sides and involved every member of the class in the activity
regardless of their knowledge of or ability in the game of football. As we
talked to Ronnie and Tyrone on the sidelines about how to cover the
action of a football game with two cameras, it became clear that this
activity was not about the sport of football. It was about being in school
and learning.
Kate DiLorenzo taught a broad range of subjects in her sixth grade
class, but she situated them within the context of sportsmanship and
competition. She was a quarterback in the class as much as on the field
and she used the relevance factor of team sports to enliven and enrich her
lesson plans.
Ronnie and Tyrone considered Ms. DiLorenzo a model of a good
teacher. It was at that point that they decided that this was the story they wanted to tell about what it was like to be a student in an urban school:
What a good teacher looks like. In the simplest of terms it was her mas-
tery of motivating her students by connecting lesson plans to an every-
day part of the world her students understood. In the boys’ words, it was
football.
Video beyond Vocation
Introducing media creation projects in the K-12 classroom seems to work
for two separate, though related, reasons:
First, these types of exercises exploit our innate capacity as storytell-
ers. The previous chapters have highlighted the many ways in which
storytelling is fundamental to our humanity and, furthermore, how this
essential quality can be put to work in the K-12 classroom.
Second, they are highly relevant to many, if not all, contemporary
learners. And relevance, in this case, is multifaceted. Not only are con-
temporary learners likely to be highly interested in—and, thus, moti-
vated by—these types of projects, they are also likely to arrive in the
classroom with many of the necessary skills and technological acumen
already in place.
So far, we’ve discussed why video is successful in the K-12 classroom.
At this point you may be convinced of the likelihood of video projects to
engage students, but you may find yourself wondering how video can be
successfully deployed in the classroom. Thus, we now turn our attention
to some strategies for success in using video in the classroom.
Perhaps one of the most important points to understand about the use
of video production in the K-12 classroom is that video—in this context,
at least—is not vocation. One of the biggest misconceptions about introducing video production in the K-12 classroom is that the teacher must
have prior experience or expertise in this area. This is not the case; there are no prerequisites. While educators should become familiar with some
basic terms, expressions, and concepts prior to introducing video produc-
tion in the classroom, the technology itself is secondary to the planned
learning outcomes of the lesson.
In order to be successful with video in the classroom, students need
support, encouragement, and, perhaps most importantly, direction. Us-
<
br /> ing video in the classroom will undoubtedly be exciting for students, but
the acquisition and mastery of video production skills is not the primary
focus of video production in this context; rather, video production should
be regarded as simply another means for students to express themselves
and to demonstrate their knowledge, exploration, and mastery of class
materials.
It’s true that technology plays a key part in the successful execution of
video production, but the general availability of contemporary informa-
tion and communication technologies (for example, mobile phones that
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Video beyond Vocation
record video) renders most of today’s students competent, if not profi-
cient, in their ability to use them. Where students lack critical direction is in the potential for their knowledge of these skillsets. All dressed up, and no place to go. Luckily, that’s where teachers come in.
There is an opportunity to use video in almost any subject to help
students grasp core concepts. Critical to the outcome of using video in the classroom, however, is the simple fact that video is used as part of a
lesson as opposed to being the lesson in and of itself.
In the following chapters, we explore this idea before offering some
strategic situations in which educators have found success with video
production in the K-12 classroom. We also begin to address video pro-
duction as a craft, considering whether there is a right way to do it as well as the merit in allowing students to use video production as a tool for
guided, topic-based exploration.
FIVE
Expression
It was a very cold, January day when we visited Brad Bartholomew, who
teaches the video, radio, and communication courses at Lake High
School—a small and somewhat affluent high school in central New York.
This town of just over 2,000 rests comfortably outside the suburbs of mid-
sized city and boasts an impressive statistic of successfully enrolling 90
percent of its graduates in college.
We were escorted to the class by a woman who monitored the visitor
sign-in process. This was because she wasn’t sure we could find his
room, which was off the beaten trail, and, as it turned out, this was a
symbol of how the school district thought of video and its place in educa-
tion.
My first impression of the lab/room, Brad’s space, was that it was
dominated by computers. It was neat, organized, and well maintained by
its keeper. Brad had been working at this school for eight years. He
started out in technology and worked his way to video, radio, and com-
munication. He had no formal training in these subjects and admitted
he’d learned everything about these areas from his students and by just
doing it.
Brad talked to us while his students entered the class, and they
seemed to know what they needed to do with minimal instruction on his
part. He explained that the students were in the production stage of their
music video assignment, working from scripted storyboards. As he
talked they were collecting their film passes from a hook on the wall
behind his desk, which granted them official permission to shoot their
footage in areas of the school outside of the classroom.
This was a special arrangement Brad had made over the years to deal
with the special needs of production that often required out-of-class des-
tinations. He told the story of his colleague who taught English near his
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classroom and was upset with the “open access” policy of his class be-
cause it allowed students to, essentially, freely roam the halls and school property while classes were going on.
In her mind, such a freedom was not appropriate for students, and she
was not happy that he encouraged this policy. This was before she was
temporarily re-assigned to a nearby school—East High School. The video
teacher at EHS had an even more liberal access policy that often involved
the teacher driving his students, if necessary, to locations miles off the
campus to get images they required. In addition to this, there was no real
policy in terms of hall passes for students left behind in the classroom.
By comparison, EHS was without limits! Later returning to Lake High
School, she acknowledged her respect for Brad’s comparatively struc-
tured policy of “film passes,” which students wore around their necks
while producing their videos.
We walked around the school with Brad as he checked on his stu-
dents. He explained that part of the film pass arrangement was that hall
monitors kept an eye on the students as well. We visited all five produc-
tion groups in their various stations across the school grounds, and they
consistently struck us as being serious in their music video production
pursuits, as well as respectful of the rules. One example of this was the
“no violence” rule.
One of the groups was shooting a protagonist being hit by a basketball
thrown by another student—VERY hard. But he wore a thick pad to
deflect the blow of the ball as it hit him in the chest. Before they recorded the shot they asked Brad if this was acceptable. Brad supervised the event
and it was a smooth, successful, and fun experience.
We talked about Brad’s curriculum, the differences between classes he
taught from radio to TV to general communications, and the way that he
taught them. Our overall impression of visual communication in the cur-
riculum was that media production was clearly seen as a vocation—this
as opposed to a means of expression or “text,” like writing.
As it turns out this had a particular bearing on the way that the super-
intendent of the school district labeled Brad and his classes. He basically told Brad, “You and what you do are essentially invisible to me.”
Brad felt that this was truly a problem, not only with the superinten-
dent, but also throughout the rest of the school. Such an attitude coming
from the top was truly a disservice to the kids, as it limited the potential and reach of video upon the school population.
The superintendent was concerned more with the “core five” subjects
in the district: English, social studies, science, math, and foreign lan-
guage. He did not see any connection between the activities of the com-
munication courses and those five subjects. No wonder Brad was invis-
ible since his classroom and what he taught were both off the beaten trail!
This is an example of how some schools tend to marginalize video as
separate from the core curriculum. What Brad’s superintendent failed to
Expression
xxxvii
see was that video (and other media tools as well) can exercise and ex-
press a student’s understanding and involvement in any “core five” sub-
ject, not just the vocational practices of professional TV or radio or com-
munication.
Video as an Instrument
It’s helpful to think of video as a tool of learning—among many—to
employ in a holistic manner. If Brad’s classroom was a “writing room”
(rather than a “video room”), the superintendent mig
ht have “seen” him
and his class because writing is an activity associated, at some level, with every core subject. Writing is widely understood to be complementary to
educational objectives across the board, not just the vocation of writing.
This despite the fact that some students might grow up to be professional
writers—not to mention that it is likely that they will be better writers
because of their multi-dimensional practice of writing in all subjects.
Videomaking can be approached in the same way. As a video instruc-
tor, I can teach video basics to my students pretty quickly and effectively in the vacuum of a “how-to” activity. But unless they apply this practice
to the visual expression of an idea, it will fade quickly. They will learn
much more and do better work if they connect the practice to subjects
and ideas outside of simple operational procedures.
It turns out Brad had confirmed this when he partnered with a Span-
ish teacher and produced a series of Spanish language radio commer-
cials. The joint exercise invigorated the respective lesson plans of the
Spanish and video students. Though Brad had wanted to do more of this
kind of cross-disciplinary work, it was an uphill battle for him and the
subject of videomaking to be seen as relevant to the teachers of other core subjects. These teachers seemed more focused on state tests than out-of-the-box teaching methods.
If teachers of core subjects allow it in their classrooms, video can serve
EDU-cation just as well as, if not better than, VO-cation. As the value of
the practice of writing is only part wordsmithery, the value of video is
only part visual craft. The most important part of both is having some-
thing to say once the pen hits the paper or the camera switches “on.”
SIX
Purpose
If there has been one consistent factor around the success of video pro-
duction in K-12 settings it has been adherence to the horse-before-cart
principle.
The idea behind it is that video production needs a purpose to be
successful—especially in educational settings. When there is no purpose