Friday, March 30, 2012

Since Everyone Else is Doing It... My Comments on the 20 Shot Film

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I loved, loved, loved the 20 shot film assignment. I had a huge internal debate in order to decide whether or not I would do this with a class of my own. I went back and forth for a few days and eventually weighed the pros and cons.

 I guess the pros have it. I do think I would complete this assignment with my future students.

When I finally saw the result of our storyboarding, collaboration, and filming, I was pleased, excited, and amused. I think that high school students generally will enjoy this assignment if given the appropriate instruction (just as we were given a 30 minute lecture about angles and shots). The process might be a little scary for future teachers. I would be worried about their film's appropriateness, the students' access to technology, and their availability to shoot. Many students are involved with extra curricular activities, so I'm sure that picking a meeting time outside of school wouldn't be ideal. Of course, they could use in class time to go shoot around the school building, but that poses other problems to consider.

 I have faith, however, that the kinks can (and should) be worked out.

1 comment:

  1. keep in mind that when teaching high school ELA classes, you typically meet for 50 minutes, 5 days a week. i certainly think you could enable enough class time for them to complete these.

    the reason i keep using in-camera editing is so that everyone has the same advantage. certainly there may be a few students who want to edit, but you can't be sure that every group will have a student with access or ability to edit. so that's why i keep it simple.

    i might also suggest that each member of a group storyboard so that they have something to bring to the table when they collaborate. i have done activities like this with less structure and found that students don't like to plan until the camera is on, which i feel defeats the purpose of interpretation and also wastes more time.

    when you do this, please tell me how it goes.

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