Unlocking the Moviemaking Mind
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were not all on the same cognitive level of development. We discovered
this when we interviewed Mrs. Brighton a few months after the screening
of the film.
For instance, though some of the kindergarteners could talk about and
relate to the idea of an audience for their film, others who may have
shaken their heads in agreement and excitement may not have truly
understood what they were agreeing with. They were just going with the
crowd. In addition, when they were developing a really scary character
for the audience, likewise they may not have been firmly aware, on an
abstract level, of what they were creating. Because when they watched
the final product most of the children were truly scared of the character
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they designed and filmed even though it was completely engineered in
full transparency in front of them.
Something very interesting and unexpected happened when the chil-
dren sat down to watch their completed movie: some of them actually
believed it! Mrs. Brighton explained:
When we sat down to screen it, some of the children actually wondered
whether the story was true even though they had witnessed it. “Was
that really you?” one asked. I actually believe there were some kids
who graduated from kindergarten that year who thought Ms. Cold-
heart [the “evil character they created”] might be real.
It turns out when we had been engaged in the process of managing the
audience’s suspension of disbelief, a good number of children in the room were engaging in an unexpectedly opposite process of suspending their
belief. Because what they were doing was truly scary to them, they were managing their fear by temporarily putting it in the background so that
they could enjoy the filmmaking activity, in much the same way that
audiences would put their disbelief in the background to enjoy the story.
In later conversations with Mrs. Brighton, we delighted in unearthing
another Piaget concept that tripped up a considerable number of young
filmmakers in the class: the concept of conservation. The basic idea be-
hind conservation (source = Wikipedia, so far) is that children develop (at different rates) an understanding that although an object’s appearance
might change, for instance when a teacher puts a mask on to pretend to
be an evil substitute teacher, that object still stays the same in quantity.
There is not a separate, additional person (evil though she may appear) in
the classroom. “In more scientific terms, redistributing an object does not affect its mass, number, or volume. For example, a child understands that
when you pour a liquid into a different shaped glass, the amount of
liquid stays the same.”
Einstein’s Point
The point to take away from this videomaking case study is not sim-
ply that we can interact with concepts at the core of traditional education, however controversial those concepts may be. More simply, we can utilize videomaking as a learning instrument. Video is not a removed,
foreign entity, but rather a fertile field for the practice of learning, in much the same way music was fertile field for Einstein’s scientific
thought process.
Traditional educational concepts like those developed by pioneers like
Jean Piaget have served the institution of education very well, but with
the insights and many developments in understanding how the human
mind actually works, a frontier of opportunity has opened for the future
practice of education. A report issued by the international collective
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OECD/CERI2 during their 2008 conference suggested a way to confront this opportunity:
A new trans-disciplinarity is needed which brings the different com-
munities and perspectives together. This needs it to be a reciprocal
relationship, analogous to the relationship between medicine and biol-
ogy, to sustain the continuous, bi-directional flow of information neces-
sary to support brain-informed, evidence-based educational practice.
Researchers and practitioners can work together to identify education-
ally-relevant research goals and discuss potential implications of re-
search results.
Videomaking can clearly serve in a complementary and illustrative role
in this exciting new direction of possibilities.
NOTES
1. Allard, H. (1977). Miss Nelson Is Missing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Illustrated by James Marshall.
2. The International Conference “Learning in the 21st century: Research, Innovation and Policy. Sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Centre for Research and Innovation.
THIRTEEN
Acknowledgment
The 4th, 5th, and 6th graders arrived in the cafeteria with great energy
and, for the most part, smiling faces. It was time for these eighty-plus
students to watch the movies that they’d spent the better part of the last
two months making. By “movies” we don’t mean Hollywood-style, fea-
ture length narratives. Their movies were grade-by-grade collections of
their individual responses to the question, “What’s important to you and
why?”
This exercise was a first step of a larger research project in search of
student perspectives on school and education. Our aim as a small re-
search team was to get to know the students, to help them and their
teachers get comfortable with production and editing technology, and to
exercise students’ expressions of their worlds.
Having already watched their movies, we had the opportunity to pay
more attention to their reactions to themselves on the screen than to the
movies themselves. We wanted to know what they saw, how they felt,
and what it meant to them when they saw themselves on the screen.
Having worked for years with K-12 students and cameras, we knew at
least a little about what to expect. In past projects, students largely en-
joyed seeing themselves on the screen, particularly in fantasy acting roles and in live camera exercises involving the pointing of a camera—wired to
a TV for everyone to see—around the classroom. They tended to “ham it
up” and vie for attention. Seeing themselves on the screen generally
seemed to put them in a perceived place of importance and boost their
self-esteem.
But this project was a bit different from most of the others, having
more of a confessional nature. It was about them specifically and what
they valued in their personal lives. A student would appear on screen,
say his or her name, what was important to them and why. It turns out
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their reactions to what they watched on the screen were, to our surprise,
different as well.
We began with the 4th graders. Their first reactions were mostly ex-
pressions of happiness and awe at the size of their faces on the large
auditorium screen. But as time went on and the novelty of the screening
event in their cafeteria subsided, a discernable new routine unfolded:
Most, if not all, of the students in the class of any particular child being screened would burst out laughing, then wildly search the semi-dark
room for that child.
It wasn’t easy because most of the time the child being sought would
have immediately covered his or her face in his or her lap. The unfolding
routine on each subject’s part included a hearty laugh, a turn away from
the screen, and almost always a return look back to the screen to watch
the rest of their own performance on the screen. Most expressions were
ten seconds so there wasn’t a whole lot of time to get used to one person
before the next one was on the screen being laughed at.
What surprised us wasn’t the laughing. It was the turning away that
was perplexing. Perhaps embarrassment? Perhaps peer pressure? And it
was interesting how short-lived most of the “turn-aways” were before
the students returned their attention to the screen and took the perfor-
mance in, usually with a look that reflected at least some degree of ac-
complishment.
For three non-comedy movies, we were generating a lot of laughter!
But why? Was it because the students were making fun of and trying to
hurt each other? The teachers wondered the same thing when we dis-
cussed the screening later. They talked about one particular student who
was very sensitive and tended to cry a lot, usually in response to ima-
gined insults from her peers. They were glad that she was one of the few
students absent that day.
Having paid close attention to the student reactions at the screening,
we remembered the student they were referring to and the response of
her classmates, and honestly couldn’t discern any difference in the nature
of the laughter around her in comparison to the others. At the heart of it, the laughter was pretty equal, which led us to believe there might be
something beyond simple peer pressure and playground power relations
going on here.
Certainly, the best way to discover answers to questions like this is to
ask the students themselves, and there is time ahead to do just that. Until then it merits at least a little thinking aloud to consider what value there might be in knowing.
What do they see when they look into the mirror of the screen, and
how could knowing this matter? In the study, we were trying to unlock
students’ expressive voices through video stories, to share their views of
school and effective education. What we’ve found is that students are not
used to being asked how they feel about their worlds. They also have
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very different ways of articulating factual knowledge, opinions, and feel-
ings than the adults who are asking them questions and teaching their
classes. We need to learn to listen to their voices and ways, rather than
waiting for them to conform to ours. For instance, most adults don’t
laugh when they are watching each other on screens. That simply
wouldn’t be an appropriate adult behavior.
Though there might have been a teasing, child-like quality about the
laughing indictments of individual students, there also was a form of
spontaneous ritual unfolding. Each student was taking his or her place on
a virtual throne in front of the audience, and the sheer irony of their
momentary importance could have caused the laughter. After all, sur-
prise and irony are two of the most common roots of comedy.
Why did they hide their faces? In his book Understanding Comics: The
Invisible Art, cartoonist Scott McCloud explains that one of the most effective weapons of good comics is understanding the way we see ourselves
as individuals when we are away from a mirror. He explains:
When two people interact, they usually look directly at one another,
seeing their partner’s features in vivid detail. Each one also sustains a
constant awareness of his or her own face, but this mind-picture is not
nearly so vivid; Just a sketchy arrangement . . . a sense of shape . . . a
sense of general placement. Something as simple and basic as a car-
toon.
The feeling of “Is that what I look like?” might be the reason why the
children turn away from their bigger-than-life image on the screen to
confront the differences between the image in their minds juxtaposed
with the vivid image from a camera. It’s a contradiction not unlike the
experience of hearing the sound of our voice from a audio recording and
asking, “Is that really what I sound like?”
The most fascinating question in all of this for us is, “Why did the
children turn back to the screen after the laughter and the burying of
their heads?” The easiest explanation is that, despite the laughter from
their peers and the incongruities between their screen selves versus their
mind selves, there was still something for them worth taking in. They
enjoyed—or at the very least were interested in—something that they
saw on that screen.
The late social scientist Herbert Blumer would likely call this a form of
symbolic interactionism: how people, young and old, negotiate meaning
as their lives unfold in front of them. In the case of children looking at
themselves on the screen, they could be seen as confronting the contra-
dictions of their images and making adjustments based on these “comic
sketches” of themselves.
When video cameras are part of classroom activities, students in that
classroom invariably end up on screens. When this happens, something
very exciting turns on in them and energizes the classroom. Though we
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are just beginning to understand the hows and whys of this mirroring
phenomenon, its implications on learning are even more of a mystery,
and likely a wide open potential for deeper learning. Because in the end,
while a traditional learning activity—say a simple math equation—may
be capable of turning on a brain, a camera can turn on a whole child.
FOURTEEN
Paths
One of the most rewarding aspects of researching K-12 media-making is
not just the amazing people we meet and incredible stories and capabil-
ities of students that we always find, it’s in the discovery process itself.
We go to a school looking for something—say, an answer to a particular
question—and always discover so much more.
Such was the case on a visit to South High—a high school of nearly
one thousand students in a suburb of a south central Connecticut city of
just under half a million people—in search of Jared “Jake” Jacobson, a
former TV and film student of mine at the university. Jake was a bit of a
mystery to us. He had attended our masters program in the early 2000s
and, as expected, launched onward to LA seeking the fortunes of a prom-
ising career in the entertainment business. Jake was above average in all
categories, an exceedingly high performer with even higher aspirations
and an uncommonly mature head on his shoulders. There was no doubt
in the minds of faculty members that he would find success, perhaps as a
big Hollywood agent, independent screenwriter, or even a mover-and-
shaker producer-type. The orientation of his success would be up to him,
but he would no doubt find it.
Jake stayed in contact over the years and seemed to be maneuvering
&n
bsp; as expected around the Hollywood community, but then he dropped out
of sight for a couple of years. As it turns out, he had taken a U-turn away from the entertainment industry and was now working in a high school
running the communications program.
This was by no means the first time one of our most promising Holly-
wood-bound graduates ended up in K-12 education instead. Teaching,
both general subjects and video, seemed to be a regular alternative for
many of our graduates who, for whatever reason, did not choose to stay
in the entertainment industry.
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Maybe it had something to do with the common foundations of com-
munication and education, both built upon the notion of “giving to oth-
ers” be it lesson plans or stories. Perhaps that was a stretch, but hearing from Jake compelled us to investigate further. We wanted to know why
Jake was where he was and, for more selfish reasons, what inside per-
spectives he could provide us in our K-12 video research.
The first hours with Jake were spent reveling in the surprisingly im-
pressive equipment and communication infrastructure he had to work
with. Unlike many other re-outfitted schools we had visited, this place
was clearly built for media. Whoever put it together had a clear under-
standing of the differences between normal instructional spaces and me-
dia instructional spaces, paying attention to everything from sound-
proofing to the shape of the walls and the layout of the space. Jake had
the resources to work with and his students were clearly taking advan-
tage of as well as tremendously benefitting from them.
Jake was absolutely in his element. His students respected and adored
him, which was clearly evident with the handwritten sign declaring “The
Boss” that they had taped to the window of his office. Like so many other
scholastic video classes I have visited, the students referred to their teacher affectionately by the same short derivative of his last name (“Jake”) we did—a sign of their comfort level with their teacher.