Mini Rant
Film is a powerful medium in part because it can represent the near perfect marriage of form and content--images and words united in a distilled narrative flow. Film tends to be an inherently empowering form of storytelling, whether those are the stories of your students or your classroom. As such, it's also a potent teaching tool in a number of ways. At this point in history, many of us are comfortable using film as a "hook" to get students' attention or as an object of study both in and of itself and as a source for comparison for other message-based mediums (think "Compare and contrast the film "Hamlet" to the play "Hamlet").
However, film can function much more directly in your classrooms. I would like educators to consider creating their own films demonstrating key components of their own curriculum. You have a complicated concept, like binary numbers, you're trying to teach in an intro to computer science course, you can show and then post (say on a blog) a link to Khan Academy's Binary Numbers. Perhaps you have to be away for a day and don't want the class to progress but aren't sure if the TOC will be in your subject area or not; or, perhaps you have a student who was away on a band field trip and missed your lecture of communism. You can assign "Communism: Overview of Communism and Marxist-Leninist States as an activity.
I would also encourage you to create your own films demonstrating "big ideas" within your own curriculum. Perhaps you have unique curriculum that you want to present in a particular way. For instance, I know that I draw out basic composition strategies at least 50 times a year for students. Wouldn't it be a dream to create a "film" of myself drawing these strategies out, post it up on www.littleonalittle.blogspot.ca so that students who were absent or simply didn't copy notes from the board could review the material at will? The point is that film opens many doors of possibility in the classroom.
Ok, so let's move on to some actual resources to build your own films from scratch:
Resources
Vimeo Video School Resources: Video 101
Storyboarding--Part of why film is so expressive is because the film-maker can have complete control of the experience. Storyboards represent one of the film-makers most essential tools as they help craft the film by "showing" exactly how the scenes appear in the sequence, what dialog goes with which visuals, etc... To make your storyboards, and therefore films, more exciting, make sure to include a variety of shot types.
Shooting Basics--You and/or your students can learn to avoid all the most basic shooting errors in less than 4 minutes (includes a helpful summary at the end of key shooting tips).
Editing Basics--A general overview with information that applies to most video editing programs.
So now you know enough for you and your students to be dangerous (and you've figured out how to press record on your camera), you're ready to make a film. Here are some "assignments" to get you started.
Assignments for any curriculum
5X5 Video
Editing with iMovie--An excellent first "assignment" for film-making in which you create a short film of five clips of five seconds each with transitions, titles, credits, and soundtrack. Includes instructions for how to upload films from iMovie directly to Vimeo.
Exemplars from Hamber's own film-makers:
Yi Hsiang--Stupid Day
Cindy--Desperation
Shimon & Anthony--Bitter Globe
Julia--Bath Time (remarkable in that she used a program on her phone to edit her film)
In the Assessment section of this post are some png files showing the rubric and self-evaluation questionnaire I used with students this year for their 5X5 videos. Feel free to adapt it to your own uses.
Video Remix
An excellent opportunity to have direct and meaningful conversations with students around intellectual property rights, copyright, copyleft, free exchange of ideas, plagiarism, and citation practises. Students (or you) create a film that makes use of a blend of footage and sound created by other people and reorganize it in such a way as to make some sort of "statement" about the material. Below in the Assessment section, you'll find an assignment sheet and self-evaluation.
One of the best features of this type of film-making is that students don't need expensive camera that may or may not be compatible with different editing programs. They literally get to hunt down their own source material and then use that material to tell their own version of the story. If you're worried about keeping track of them, you can always have them use a learning log format to document sources, ideas, challenges, and resources they've used.
Students at Hamber have just started working on there own remixes so I can't post any links yet but I will update this post as soon as they get them up. In the meantime, here are is a link to some remixes currently shortlisted for Vimeo's Awards. If you really want to see a mind-blowing example of the remix genre, currently as a part of the Vancouver Art Gallery's Beat Nation Exhibit'. Jackson 2bears' Heritage Mythologies comments on racism perpetuated by the film industry through the use of film. See the Beat Nation Teachers' Guide for more information (or better yet, go see the exhibit).
Assessment
(Incidentally, the first self-evaluation and rubric, I've been using versions of for most of the courses I've taught. The Remix Self-Evaluation is heavily influenced by/adapted from Art Rubric - an Artwork Assessment Form by Marvin Bartel. I have found Mr. Bartel's site very influential in general.
5X5 Video Rubric and Self-Evaluation
Video Remix Assignment
For your remix project, you need to accomplish the following tasks:
2. Create your own original remix between 2-5 minutes long
3. Make some sort of “statement” you can verbalize in one sentence
4. Upload to Vimeo and send a link to vp2012koch@gmail.com
The evaluation criteria are:
- Remix is a creative reinterpretation of the source materials
- Images and music are appropriate and well integrated
- Sources are referenced in MLA format (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/09/)
- Editing is clean (i.e. sound quality is good, transitions are subtle, information flows, etc.)
- Multiple effects and strategies were used (i.e. images, videos, animations, text, captions, voice, music, etc.)
- Information in video is accurate and quantity is sufficient
- The remix’s message is clear and convincing
