Unlocking the Moviemaking Mind

terial motive like this behind videomaking in schools is that it puts stu-

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  Chapter 24

  dents in a very unrealistic position: to seek critical acclaim in competition with others who most certainly will have more experience and resources.

  Thus, much, if not all, of the road to success in such a pursuit will be

  filled with failure.

  Visual stories created from a learning motive are artist or maker-cen-

  tered. They seek discovery, insight, and knowledge out of the experience

  of making a movie toward a predetermined, teacher-defined learning

  objective. The experience is successful if it puts the student filmmaker(s) in a position of taking ownership of a lesson. It doesn’t matter how many

  people watch such a story, in terms of the educational value, or how

  many awards it wins as long as the experience of making it delivers the

  lesson plan to the visual creator. The more there is to learn in a subject, the richer the videomaking experience can be.

  Over time we have also learned that stories created from a learning

  motive have a very different aesthetic. Considering that stories made in

  the realm of profit motive are expected to perform to the highest artistic

  standards and expectations of visual image forms and genres they can

  only be deemed successful if they are “beautiful” to their targeted audi-

  ence.

  As long as stories created in the realm of learning are connected to a

  learning outcome they need only to be beautiful to their creators. Why is

  this? Because the motive behind their making is more about the active

  and participatory experience and doing of a lesson plan than the final

  product.

  Keith Devlin (2011) illustrated this in relation to the school subject of

  mathematics, in particular the use of video games to bring dimension to

  the practice mathematics:

  [M]athematics is not about acquiring basic skill or learning formulas.

  It’s a way of thinking about problems in the world. The skills are mere-

  ly the tools you need in order to do that thinking. Math is not a body of

  knowledge, it’s something you do. And the printed word can be a terribly inefficient way to learn how to do something. . . . for example, if

  you want to learn to play chess, you can learn the rules from a book,

  but you won’t learn to play chess until you start playing games. The

  same is true for learning to ride a bicycle, learning to swim, to ski, to

  play tennis, or to play the guitar.

  Our recent work with a 6th grade class at Frederick K-8 School demon-

  strated the learning motive in practice. We had worked with Derek at

  another middle school the year before this project and had the time to

  make him comfortable with videomaking technology. After a year of

  working together we left him with a simple camera kit in hopes that he

  would find a way to use it in his new school. It didn’t take long before he came up with an idea in the form of the Eagle Eye project.

  Motive

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  For an assignment in his English class, he wanted to focus on the

  process of editing written works, in other words, the process of re-work-

  ing a first draft into a more effective final draft after receiving feedback.

  Editing had always been a lesson he found very challenging to get

  through to students. But, after he watched a movie being made with

  iMovie software the year before, he realized he could teach the concept of

  editing. In short, he realized he could more effectively develop an appre-

  ciation and understanding of the editing process, while doing something

  that fascinated his class: making a movie. If he could get his students to

  appreciate the process of editing, it didn’t matter what medium they

  used, as much as it mattered that the students experienced the joy of re-making something into something better using the editing process.

  His idea was to have the class create a news magazine show about

  issues of their school and have small groups create different stories for

  the show. Through this video experience he would demonstrate to them

  how much better their second drafts of video stories were once they had

  been re-edited and reconsidered in a thoughtful editing process.

  Eagle Eye and the Incarnation of Writing

  In the end, Derek’s Eagle Eye project was a success on both expected

  and unexpected fronts. First, the project was an example of an increasing

  move on our part to take a step away from classrooms as video technolo-

  gy and form consultants. Derek and his class were largely independent in

  this activity and they figured the experience out and made it work on

  their own. This is very important in advocating the idea of incorporating

  videomaking in K-12 classrooms, as it should be doable.

  It is important to acknowledge that the experience was not without

  flaws, difficulties, and disappointments. Derek was not happy with the

  work of a small handful of the more than twenty-five students in his

  class. These students did not embrace and put themselves into the writ-

  ing aspect of the experience the way he had hoped. And the school was

  not quite ready for the impact of a videomaking exercise on the everyday

  activities of the traditional practice of education. For instance, one group decided they wanted to do a story about school security, so they went to

  the head of security with a video camera and informed the man that they

  needed to do an interview with him. The head of security, though a very

  nice and approachable person by nature, was confused and caught off-

  guard by not only the impact of a camera being thrust into his face, but

  also—in the absence of any explanation or context—the inherent role

  reversal presented in the act of children questioning his authority.

  Initial incidents like this led to a pause in videomaking activities. Der-

  ek realized the necessity for him and the students to create a process of

  information, clearance, and scheduling that would avoid putting staff

  and students of the school on the spot. In this lesson phase of the Eagle

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  Chapter 24

  Eye project they learned two things: first, that they needed a process for

  their videomaking activities. But something else was clear after the prin-

  cipal of the school spoke with Derek after the incident. Even though the

  status quo had been threatened by the unchecked and unexpected flurry

  of videomaking activities in the school, the school community was talk-

  ing about it and they were clearly energized by the experience despite the

  fact that some changes in approach were necessary.

  Most importantly of all, however, the lesson plan was coming to life,

  certainly in the way that Derek had hoped, and also in additional unex-

  pected ways. In the same way that Keith Devlin talked about the fact that

  math was not a body of knowledge, but rather something we do, Derek

  was finding the videomaking experience was bringing the practice of

  writing to life. The Eagle Eye project was slowly but surely becoming an

  incarnation of the writing process. Students were not just writing their

  stories in response to an assignment sheet and handing them in. They

  were pitching ideas and often re-pitching when D
erek told them they

  could do better. And the students were not reacting to the challenge in an

  academic assignment way. They were going back to make their Eagle Eye

  story better for broadcast.

  The students who had been sent away from the security officer were

  forced to rethink their approach to an information source and understand

  that source in a more complex, human way. They were learning about the

  responsibility that writers have to not only readers, but also their subjects they write about.

  They were learning how to collaborate as writers and how they could

  connect their own ideas with others to give extra life and resonance to

  subjects they wrote about. This was particularly evident when it was time

  to talk about the opening to their news magazine show. In this video

  piece they would have to agree upon a collective identity and represent it

  in their own stories. The basic idea behind their opening was that their

  mascot (the Frederick Eagle) was a strong creature with great vision from

  above. They used that idea to incorporate in their writing identities—

  each of their stories would serve as “eagle eye perspectives” on their

  school. What had always been a solitary experience to them (writing in a

  vacuum of their own voice as a student in response to an assignment)

  was becoming a collaborative enterprise that required an entire rethink-

  ing of what writing was. The bottom line was that they were doing writing.

  In the end, visual stories conceived and created out of the motive to

  learn are by no means any easier (or more difficult) than visual stories

  created out of the motive to achieve public (and financial) impact. They

  are just different: suited for the respective environments they are in. But there is an extra advantage for K-12 filmmakers engaged in the pursuit of

  learning. The learning motive inspires a new, fresh, and truly unique

  Motive

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  storytelling genre that presents young videomakers with a wide open

  frontier of possibilities for not only aesthetic achievement, but, more im-

  portantly, learning achievement.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Confabulation

  Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in

  which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and

  incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the

  consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought

  small. . .

  —Virginia Woolf (1925) on the inherently human dimension of writing

  Recent brain research (Gazzaniga, 2012) has shed fresh light on the fasci-

  nating way the human mind makes sense of the often overwhelmingly

  complex (even chaotic) world it exists in. From Woolf’s perspective,

  clearly ahead of her time in 1925, there was a certain atomic level beauty

  in the complexities that fell upon the mind. Her words were meant to

  encourage writers to savor these complexities before reducing them to

  simple explanations or writing forms.

  Michael Gazzaniga examined the other side of this equation, particu-

  larly how the mind not only searched for clarity in the chaotic, but also

  how it instinctually preferred such clarity, through a process he termed

  confabulation. This process could be seen in split-brain patients presented with contradictory visual information:

  What was interesting was that the left hemisphere did not say, “I don’t

  know,” which was the correct answer. It made up a post hoc answer

  that fit the situation. It confabulated, taking cues from what it knew

  and putting them together in an answer that made sense. We called this

  left-hemisphere process the interpreter. It is the left hemisphere that

  engages in the human tendency to find order in chaos, that tries to fit

  everything into a story and put it into a context. It seems driven to

  hypothesize about the structure of the world even in the face of evi-

  dence that no pattern exists.

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  Chapter 25

  These findings not only bring life to an idea we began the conversation of

  this book with—we are hardwired to tell stories—but they also demon-

  strate a companion human drive to make sense of the world, indicating

  that we are hardwired to make sense of the world, or to learn.

  These empirical insights are also particularly helpful in beginning to

  understand the experience of videomaking in K-12 learning environ-

  ments. Though we’ve certainly gotten used to the idea of how well re-

  ceived videomaking is by students, we still cannot help wonder truly

  why it is so enriching for kids, beyond the simple novelty of the experi-

  ence.

  The multidimensional context around the creation of youth video is

  certainly rich in implications involving the opportunities for youth voice, and also the creation of unique forms and processes of doing youth-based

  digital media storytelling. Videomaking in K-12 settings encourages and

  allows creative space for sense-making, and also, in Woolf’s sense, small

  almost peripheral discoveries that come out of the narratives of sense-

  making.

  Day in My Life

  When the eighty-five students in our Smart Kids Visual Stories Project

  were given the chance to be seen and heard, they always had stories to

  tell that reflected how they made sense of the experiences of their educa-

  tion. To date they have produced hundreds of hours of footage, nearly

  three terabytes of digital video stories about their experiences and per-

  spectives on school.

  But this footage and the stories compiled from it also unearthed inter-

  esting complexities around the confabulative storytelling process stu-

  dents engaged in. When it comes to the storytelling process around the

  K-12 videomaking experience, there is no manual of how to tell a story,

  what kind of story it should be, what form of media or genre would fit

  the story best. Story is a very complicated word and when you add mov-

  ing images and sound it gets even more complicated, especially as it

  relates to the media production process surrounding its creation. This

  was illustrated in recent experiences surrounding seventh grader Talia

  Edwards’s visual story at Corrigan K-8 School.

  FLASH FORWARD:

  SMART KIDS VISUAL STORY #9

  “A Day in My Life”

  by Talia Edwards, Corrigan School, Grade 7

  INTERIOR: CLASSROOM (CORRIGAN SCHOOL)—MORNING

  We are looking at part of the classroom from a very odd, perhaps unin-

  tended angle as if recording something that was not meant to be re-

  corded. Talia is partially revealed as she enters left frame with equipment

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  bag, tripod, and small video camera in her hand. Some classmates near

  her are facing off-screen right in the direction of the teacher who is out of frame. We hear Talia’s voice-over, describing the action.

  TALIA (voiceover)

  One day in my second period class I got to class late with a lot of

  equipment in my hands. As soon as I got settled in and had almost

  everything put away—except my camera which I was
examining at the

  time—The teacher starting yelling at another student. By time she was

  done I was just about to put my camera away when she started yelling

  at me. In confusion, I turned around and just listened, just catching the

  angry question.

  TEACHER (yelling)

  Why do you have that camera in my classroom?!

  TALIA (quietly)

  It’s for a project. At my old school this group of people from the univer-

  sity came to my school and we made a video of our experience. Now

  they’re coming back to see us in our new environment.

  TEACHER (yelling)

  Who gave you permission to have a camera in my classroom? You

  need to put that away!

  TALIA

  The principal gave me permission.

  TEACHER (yelling)

  The principal can’t give you permission to have something in my class-

  room! This is my classroom!

  TALIA (voiceover)

  By now I’ve turned around [away] in anger but didn’t do or say any-

  thing.

  TEACHER (yelling)

  Look at me when I’m taking to you!

  TALIA (voiceover)

  So I turned around [to face the teacher], but she didn’t say anything.

  Then she got up and I turned back around [away].

  TEACHER (yelling)

  You know what? I’m sick and tired of your behavior! Go to ISS! [In-

  School Suspension].

  TALIA

  For what? What did I do?

  TALIA (voiceover)

  She gave me a lot of false reasons.

  TEACHER (yelling)

  You can either go to ISS or you will have lunch detention!

  TALIA (voiceover)

  So I quietly picked up all of my stuff, and went to ISS for time out, but I ended up having to stay the whole period.

  FADE TO BLACK

  TALIA (voiceover)

  This situation made me mad, and made me feel like I was helpless.

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  Chapter 25

  Context of the Project

  Talia’s story began in her second year with the Smart Kids Visual

  Stories. She was one of twenty-two students we followed after the district

  decided to close the original K-8 school we were based in. In the previous

  year, Talia was also one of eighty-five students (the number fluctuated as