take a moviemaking activity with so very many choices at hand, in other
words deciding on a genre.
Genre Trap
Genre is a term that dates back to Aristotle and Plato, defined as
something that distinguishes a type of something from another. The gen-
re that this conversation is most broadly based on—movie genre—is a
type of media text or discourse. The term movie also functions as a genre, indicating a particular subcategory of media product, as opposed to TV
show or audio recording, with certain rules of engagement and expecta-
tions on the part of those who watch it. In K-12 environments we have
noticed quite often that the concept of genre is a trap of sorts that limits inventive outcomes that might occur between learning and media production.
Ironically, we find this most often with teachers who have media
experience or any level of confidence with videomaking as a learning
tool. These teachers tend to mimic existing professional genre forms and
practices. They instruct their students to create media works that resem-
ble movies, TV shows, commercials, music videos, podcasts, web series:
All in the shadow of some professional model. Doing this creates a cer-
tain vocationally-minded incentive to make a video story look like a pro-
fessional work. The measure of success therefore becomes to master the
technical quality of the visual product, putting students at a tremendous
disadvantage. The problem is, given their limited time and resources, this
is an unattainable goal, and in the end it has questionable pedagogical
merits.
Instructors who base their videomaking activities on genre mastering
will often ask what they can do to prepare their students for the next
stage: in the case of videomaking, the next stage is a college-level study of media—something the vast majority of K-12 students will not ultimately
pursue.
Our answer to this question usually surprises teachers. We tell them
to prepare the students for everything they can do in their school first,
mostly because there is much for them to accomplish on this front. For
starters, they can connect their filmmaking to the world they are in right
now: such as all of their classes (not just communications), their day-to-
Transformation
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day school activities, their extracurricular activities, their governance and interaction with teachers and administrators.
They are surprised because they are not conditioned to think of the
traditional educational space in a visual way. Visual discourse is seen as
an outside school entity from the perspective of educators. We simply do
not use visual media in the context of school. Instead, we tend to rely on
reading, writing, and speaking—predominantly print media. Therefore
the idea of connecting videomaking to that print dominant environment
is a bit like swimming upstream. There is a similar discursive resistance
in the college world as well. Imagine what would happen if we allowed
our PhD students to do their dissertations in video, rather than print, if
they chose to. It’s not only an otherworldly idea in and of itself, but it also is value-laden. Visual text is not considered the same value in comparison to printed text. It is considered comparatively inferior, not because it is truly inferior, but more because it is unknown and untested in academic environments. In addition, there is not yet an accepted genre of aca-
demic work that allows for visually produced text in traditional academic
settings.
Thus, the complications surrounding this genre factor present educa-
tors yet another challenge to endure when bringing the practice of video-
making into traditional learning environments.
So there is a double setback when it comes to the idea of the genre
factor. First teachers are drawn outward to media genres that don’t, as a
rule, fit their learning environments and comparably limited resources.
And second, when they look inward to the school system, there are no
established genre zones for the practice of videomaking.
Genre Ecosystem
Anis Bawarchi’s framing of genre as an ecosystem is particularly fitting for the rising tide of K-12 media production activities, as well as the
dynamically evolving twenty-first-century media landscape.
In ecological terms, genre is a changing and interdependent organism
that both affects and is affected by its environment, rather than a static
entity. The elements around genre can contribute to what it is, even
changing it when necessary. In terms of writing—which is at the heart of
moviemaking—Bawarchi suggests that writing recreates genres as well
as genre recreates writing.
In college classrooms we introduce the idea of genre as a series of soft
and malleable boundaries. There are strengths in having boundaries.
They build audience expectations and involvement because they know
what they are getting, like a particular product in a grocery store. In this sense, sugar is sugar and if the grocery consumer wants sugar, they can
expect to find it in the sugar section, or in media terms, genre. There are also weaknesses in boundaries. In the case of the grocery store, not every
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customer is served by one sugar. New tastes and needs evolve over time,
so subcategories and subgenres of sugar appear in the sugar section to
meet those needs and expectations.
Expanding from this example, school video is a particular culture of
videomaking in need of a subgenre that serves its educational needs and
interests. When we make movies with K-12 students, we are quite natu-
rally drawn into a genre creation process. This process is a negotiation
between existing content boundaries and forms and new and different
forms that challenge existing boundaries.
Being New
When we worked with Leia on her story about what it was like to
always be new in school, we were engaged in a lot of genre negotiation.
This was certainly the rule, not the exception, when it came to working
with kids on their stories about school.
Leia had basically found herself in a new school for every grade of her
school experience thus far. Some of the moves resulted from her family
moving and some from natural promotion to a higher grade. But at least
two of her moves to new schools were due to administrative decisions to
close schools and move students to other schools.
We began the project with a thorough discussion of the story with
Leia and what she wanted to say in that story. The subject of genre came
up later, but in clear service to the delivery of the story. Leia did not have any preference for a genre, she just knew what she wanted to tell a story
about.
When we introduce the concept of genre to our college filmmaking
students, we do it in a critical manner that demonstrates the social con-
struction and dynamic evolution of motion picture genres. We do this to
encourage their inventiveness when it comes to genre. How they identify
with a genre should first be in service to the story they are telling, rather than in service to the genre. Toward this end, we made a short presentation to all of the Smart Kids storytellers to demonstrate the variety of
genr
e directions they could take in the telling of their story. This wasn’t an exhaustive list of the only things they could do, but rather a collection of different styles to stimulate their creative visual storytelling process.
Though most of the examples leaned toward nonfiction styles, there were
some that also involved fiction-based styles, especially the music video.
To help figure out what genre would work best for Leia, we asked her
to write the story down as it came to her spontaneously. She took about
ten minutes to write it down:
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cxxxv
Being New
Being new. It’s hard leaving all your friends. Making new friends is
even harder. If you don't fit in with the right people then forget it.
Being new means sometimes you don’t know all the stuff that hap-
pened. When I did find a friend she acted as if she knew me all my life.
She is now my best friend and she made being the “new kid” not so
difficult as it was.
This helped narrow down the genre directions and allowed us to ask
more pointed questions to zero in on this particular story’s genre form.
We asked if she would like to use what she wrote in her visual story, or
base something else on it. She wanted to use these words. We asked if she
wanted to read the words or have a narrator read them about her. She
responded that she wanted to read them, so we recorded her reading of
the words on video.
After she got used to the awkwardness of her hearing her voice, we
asked her if any images or music came to mind that might accompany the
words. She was very excited about a song called “Fix You” by the group
Coldplay that she felt would add a certain sadness to the story she
wanted to tell. This was because being new was mostly lonely and sad to
Leia. She also wanted her friend who she had written about to appear in
her story. This is when we came up with a simple, symbolic, fictional
activity of her walking down a long, lonely hall and eventually finding
her friend at the end of it.
Through the combined product all the aspects of audio, visual, and
story form that she selected for her story did not conform to one particu-
lar genre, in the end it felt natural and fit the story that was being told.
This particular case study represents the hip-hop-like nature of the still
evolving genre of school video (if there is such a thing). Like hip-hop, K-
12 video is one part old and one part new. In the end the blend feels
original and fitting for the content.
In addition to the creative negotiation that was going on, the process
was clearly also a negotiation between student and teacher, with one
constant: the content behind the genre. Genre is a condition around con-
tent, not the content itself. Genre should serve the content and the stu-
dents who create it. If the teacher is the originator of the content of the videomaking activity, they can shape the genre to fit the content, and
essentially reinvent genres as they fit the lesson plan.
When it comes to K-12 media production, the significance of genre
encourages teachers to take ownership of what once were exotic prac-
tices—movies and TV shows made in New York and Hollywood—from
lands far away. Movies once were the purview of others, but now that we
can make them in schools it’s time to stake a claim on the genre of movie-
making itself and give it an educational twist.
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Chapter 23
If teachers can read a movie, why can’t they write one too? They may
not be the next Spike Lee, but in an ecological sense, they don’t have to
be. In this ecosystem, where there’s a will, there’s a movie.
NOTE
1. From their introduction to Genre in a Changing World (2009).
The Mess Is the Message
By now it’s apparent that incorporating video production in the K-12
classroom isn’t always neat and precise. As the previous chapters make
clear, introducing video production in the classroom requires a certain
willingness to allow students to become an active part of the educational
equation.
Video production exercises, thus, can inherently challenge didactic
learning, which emphasizes clearly demarcated roles and outcomes in the classroom. The didactic method of learning is very common in the
American education system. Outcomes are generally focused on cogni-
tion and demonstrations of knowledge acquisition in the short term. In
the didactic method, teachers are knowledge bearers and students are
knowledge receivers. The relationship between teachers and students, as
referenced earlier, is one-way.
Video production is more aligned with experiential learning, a learn-
ing style that emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge through hands-on
experiences and fluid structures. Student and teacher roles are still de-
fined in experiential learning, but the relationship between them is more
fluid and informed by a two-way style of communication in which stu-
dent feedback is a critical part of the learning process.
The complexities of actually doing video production in the K-12 class-
room can perhaps best be summarized by the following: The mess is the
message. This saying takes its cue from the work of Marshall McLuhan
who coined the phrase “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1964/
1994) to talk about how technologies shape content.
The mess is the message. This finding is an important reminder of the
fact that video production in the K-12 classroom is process-based, mean-
ing that the experience of acquiring knowledge is just as important as the
demonstration of knowledge. Hopefully, this finding will provide some
refuge when encountering confusion, uncertainty, or even a radical de-
parture from the intended lesson when using video production in the
classroom. It’s easy to have tunnel vision, concentrating solely on out-
comes and constantly making efforts to move students toward that goal.
Although the outcome is clearly important as a demonstration of stu-
dent learning, the process of creation is also significant. During this process it is possible—and even likely—that students and educators may
encounter dead-ends, feelings of frustration, and frequent and continu-
ous adjustments to their original ideas. Such instances may seem to sug-
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The Mess Is the Message
i
gest that the intervention is failing; on the contrary, they are an expected part of the process and can be a productive part of the learning process.
Video production is extremely adaptable and can be successful in nu-
merous settings and circumstances, but only when it is used organically.
Successful endeavors in video production in the K-12 classroom require
vision, purpose, and structure, but they also require flexibility, commit-
ment to process, and strategic risk-taking.
Evaluations that are not based solely on outcomes are also necessary
when assessing the success of the intervention. To focus solely on out-
come is to sacrifice the journey for the sake of the destination. We must
suppress the instinct to focus only on outcome, and, at first,
it may feel
unnatural to do so, especially on account of the fact that education tends
to value outcome-based processes and measurements. In spite of the em-
phasis on outcome, it is essential to remember that destination cannot be
reached without first enduring a journey, however uncomfortable, diver-
gent, or messy it may be.
TWENTY-FOUR
Motive
Preparing future movers and shakers for the film and television indus-
tries involves introducing them to the often painful negotiation between
art and commerce. It’s one thing to make a film or have an idea; it’s quite another to sell it to an audience at the same time.
This is why we introduce them to both the art of visual storytelling
and the profit motive behind that art at the same time. In the end a
successful film or TV show has to meet needs beyond the creator, so it
can’t be just a good idea to the creator. It has to be a good idea to the
audience, and it has to attract a large enough audience to pay for the
production. Through repetition and practice, students become profes-
sionally inclined creators of visual media by successfully walking the line between the creative story they want to tell and the profit motive that
pays for it.
The great thing about moviemaking in K-12 schools is that there is no
profit motive to worry about. But there is another motive that must be
dealt with at some point: the learning motive.
Profit versus Learning
What is the difference between stories made in the contexts of these
respective motives? Visual stories created from a profit motive are audi-
ence-centered. They seek quantities of viewers: The more viewers that
can be attracted to the story and watch it, the better. Being involved in a pursuit of this nature puts storytellers in fierce competition with each
other for audience reaction: who can tell the best stories (in terms of
critical acclaim); who can tell the most beautiful stories (involving the
most sophisticated visual and audio effects); who can tell the most popu-
lar stories (highest rated, most watched). The obvious problem with ma-
Unlocking the Moviemaking Mind Page 16