Final Reflection

As I look back on this course and my goals I realize how general those goals were, and as such it is pretty easy for me to say that I accomplished them.  However I will look at each goal and discuss my success with them severally.
Goal 1: I will learn with moderate proficiency to use the editing software Adobe Premire, and be able to teach students to do the same.
I feel that I accomplished this fairly well.  While clearly no expert, I feel that I have enough knowledge to use the program and with more experience I will be more expert in the ways.  In my experience as a teacher I have found that I learn a subject really well upon teaching it.  My hope is to be able to teach this program to others to solidify my knowledge.
Goal 2: I will learn how to use the manual settings on a camera and how to teach that to students.
This I can do so long as the settings haven't been changed to be inaccessible.  I feel very confinent in my abilty to white balance, and I have even looked at the settings on my old cameras at home, which I learned had manual settings (both my video and still camera have f-stops, who knew right!?)  So, I feel confident in using these settings and controls.  I would have no problem teaching it to my students.
Goal 3: I will be develop assignments and assessments that I can use in my classes that will be effective in determining the level of mastery for certain skills.
This I have done.  I must say, I look forward to using these assignments in my advanced film class this year.  I feel more confident than ever to teach these skills now that I have organized them into assesible chunks.  Even without this, my improved knowledge of the camera, composition, pre-production, lighting, sound, and editing will make me a better teacher of my foundational level film course.

Mind=Blown

So, I decided that I wanted to show 2 things that I feel are important in documentary filmmaking: Interview and Process.  I have a former students who, though he has pursued other studies than theatre, has continued to use his skill as a Mentalist.  I, being interested in this,  asked if I could make this mini-doc about him.  In connection with the assignment that I created for my students, I chose to film my B-roll of him doing his process of Mentalism with some random students at BYU.  The interview wasn't supposed to change locations, but it rapidly became windy and we had to move inside.  So to help in the transition I filmed him walking to different places.  In putting together the interview footage and the B-roll I found that the later questions served better to introduce the subject, while the earlier question served better to finish things out.  So the locations appear in reverse order from when we shot them.  Generally the project turned out well,, but for some sound issues which I am still figuring out.

Doc Work

I am interested in how documentaries show us processes.  Such a common theme in docs is the process that people go through to accomplish some goal.  This can be as intense and grand in scale as Election or as simple and poetic as the french film Glas.  No matter what they show the steps that a person takes to make it to the end.  This is enormously helpful in trying to create the semblance of a narrative in a documentary film, processes have a beginning middle and an end.  When coupled with an interview this can make for a very interesting project.  We see the process and the associated narrative, while the interview gives us the character and themes that are essential for so many films.  It is as if the elements of tragedy set down by Aristotle in the poetics can still have place in non-fiction film.  He listed plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle.  With this approach to process and interview we can see the majority of those elements play out.  This is why I chose to have the assignment be a process with an interview about the process.  Not only does it allow students to engage with the very technical aspects of documentary work in B-roll, lighting, editing, and interview preparation, but it also gives them some very easy to work with material to create an engaging narrative.

License: A Narrative Film Project

In preparing this project, wanted to do something that I felt that the students at my school could do reasonably well with the resources that we have.  This lesson was to build on some of the other lessons that I have written for this class.  So the students would have experience with script writing, composition, lighting, sound, and editing software.  This assignment would be part of the endgame for the project.  One of the biggest problems with amateur films is continuity.  I wanted to focus the assessment on continuity, particularly the 30 degree rule and the 180 degree rule.  The full assignment can be found here.  As an important part of the assessment they are to do some basic pre-production by bracketing the script with shot/coverage.  A copy of mine for this project is found here and here.  For me it was enormously helpful to have that script while shooting.  Knowing myself I would have screwed up a lot more without it.  This is only a short section of the original script as per assignment.
I chose to not have them do a shot list, but in retrospect that would be a good idea.  Imagining the shot/coverage and executing it are two very different things.  That is why I find it imperative that the shots be edited together so we can really see the continuity.   We do have a video production lab at my school with both Premier and FinalCutPro.  The students would have access to this equipment to finish the project.  In the end I think that this would be a great stepping stone to a final project in the class.  Enjoy.

Dialogue editing exercize

We, as an exercise in both filming and editing dialogue, chose a scene from 10 Things I Hate About You shot and edited it.  This is my version.

Teaching Narrative Film Techniques

As I think about the struggles of teaching Narrative film to high school students I realize that the the main difficulty is that the elements that make film work are intended to be invisible.  Whether the seamlessness of filmmaking is due to our being accustomed or because it is inherent is up to debate.  However, what works for creating continuity in a film works.  Without discussing the nature of the Institutional Mode of Representation, we can agree that certain techniques have become enormously important in maintaining that continuity.  Such concepts as the '180' degree rule, or the 30 degree rule are so commonplace in the industry that we don't even pay attention to their relevance.  So I see teaching such elements of continuity to my students as being a sort of reveal of the man behind the curtain so to speak.  As the apparatus becomes visible, it puts tools in the hands of students to not only interpret the film but also bake film of their own.  They could even reflect on the power of medium that uses a language so surreptitiously.  If they are successful at conceal so common a part of the craft, what else might be hiding in there?

8+2: an Exercise in Composition

For this project we were to create a lesson with an assessment that we could use in our classes that we teach that focussed on the elements of composition.  That lesson with rubric can be found here.  Then we were to do the assignment and post the video which can be found below.  This was an interesting experience.  Often as teachers we make assessments for our students and then give them without any test.  Our first batch of students become guinea pigs for our experiment.  I guess that is why so often it feels like flying into the unknown with these new lessons and assessment plans.  In this case, I have completed the assignment myself.  This has a number of advantages.  First, I was able to work out a lot of bugs in the assignment now before any students look at it.  Second, I was able to create an example of what the finished product is to look like.  With untried assessments we often have nothing to show the students to demonstrate what we are looking for.  This solves that problem.  Third, it is proof that I know what I am doing.  Often in tech heavy classes students and teachers may not have as great a chasm between them, and sometimes the roles are even reversed.  So with this I am able to say, "Look, I can do this, and so can you."
I think that this will be an invaluable asset as I work toward creating a better quality curriculum for my students in my film courses.

Composition and editing exercise

We did this as a scavenger hunt; finding different compositional elements.  Then we edited it together.  It was fun and gave us some experience with the camera and with Adobe Premier which I have never used before.

Composition

While I have had some rudimentary understanding of composition, this week has helped me to solidify my knowledge and give me greater confidence in teaching those elements to students.  For example, I knew that such a thing as high angle and low angle shots existed and that they helped to portray the power relationship of the character, but I was not aware that there was such a thing as above or below eye-line.  Also, the significance of the different framings.  That wide shots help to emphasize the object's place in the environment or that close-up exclude the environment for intimacy, is new knowledge (though, honestly, it is intuitive if you just think about it.
Also invaluable was the instruction on the manual camera controls.  I was aware of the different settings, but I was not familiar with what they did or how to manipulate them.
With this new and more specified knowledge I feel that I could design a unit more effectively on the use of composition elements.

Diversity of Cohort Brings Enlightenment

As I have been thinking about writing and how to show my students the mechanics and methods of writing in media, I have been impressed by the standout ideas shared by my cohort.  I have found that our rather diverse backgrounds have given us the opportunity to see how to teach similar ideas from different perspectives.  All of us had to come up with an assignment for the writing of a story.  I was impressed by the diversity of structures and activities that resulted from that.  Emily designed her lesson for children ages 3-11.  I found the project remarkably cohesive and doable.  The video example of her sons work based on the lesson proved the effectiveness of the plan.  It showed that media literacy is not something that should be limited to high school age kids.  Amy's lesson was particularly useful in showing a very practical and accesible way to assess students knowledge of basis narrative structure.  I was also taken by Mindy's oral history approach.  Oral histories are becoming a fascinating way to introduce people into the lives of others. Podcasts, video diaries, and the like have become modern incarnations of the old stories grandpa used to tell around the fire.  I think that her lesson lent itself to that kind of end production.  Reilly showed that there is value in the short film and that students need to realize that as a form it has much potential.
I look forward to the things that we will continue to share in this class.

Course Goals

There are a number of different things that I would like to get out of this course.  Since I feel that a technical or production class is a little out of my element, I look forward to the things that we will cover and create.
Goal 1: I will learn with moderate proficiency to use the editing software Adobe Premire, and be able to teach students to do the same.
Goal 2: I will learn how to use the manual settings on a camera and how to teach that to students.
Goal 3: I will be develop assignments and assessments that I can use in my classes that will be effective in determining the level of mastery for certain skills.