Thinking Creatively about Video Assignments - A Conversation with Penn Faculty - March 2008 - Video Transcript

This informal conversation in March 2008 brought five Penn faculty to the Weigle Information Commons to discuss their experiences teaching classes that have included video assignments. We thank our participants for sharing their expertise:

Peter Decherney: Having students do video assignments as part of a critical studies course teaches them a lot about how to view films and how to analyze them. I think we're all pretty good at analyzing writing because we all write, and we've learned how to write, and we're taught the techniques of writing very early. But we are more passive film consumers and media consumers. And I think having to be able to use a camera, thinking about framing a shot, thinking about editing, thinking about sound, all these things help us to become more critical viewers of media.

Andrew Lamas: Right, and also more critical citizens. In a society where so much of our politics takes place in the media, we have to learn how not only to be conscious about how consent is manufactured, but also about how we can use media to get our voice out in the political process. And I think making films gives us the literacy to do that.

Jacqui Sadashige: Isn't there an analogous relationship, finding resources, citing your sources, using that to back up your research, and finding the right piece of music to use in the background, finding the right comic moment that you insert into an otherwise serious video to lighten the mood? I think there's a similar process of research, appropriate insertion, and actually documentation because of copyright laws.

Regina Austin: Right.

Andrew Lamas: My students find that making a good film, even a good short three-minute film, is harder than writing a paper. It's just more work for my students. I think I agree with you. In a lot of ways, it's a pleasure to watch the films that they've made. I still love writing, and I still love reading their papers, but seeing comes before words. We've got to make a commitment to increasing the visual literacy of our students, and this is one great way to do it.

Andrew Lamas: What I've also had as part of an assignment, the student on camera with a subject doing an interview. And I've found that it's hard to ask a question that elicits a wonderful, creative, insightful response from someone else. That's a hard thing to do. But it seems like it's really important, not only in making films, but in creating a community, engaging in democracies generally. We want people to know how to dialogue with one another, to bring out the best in other people. And I think the film assignments have allowed me to give the students a platform for trying that out. It's a kind of democracy in action.

Louise Krasniewicz: And you know another thing is I like the idea that I'll be showing these films in class, and when they write a paper, the other students don't get to read their papers. When they do a film, they get to see what other people have done, and that's so exciting.

Regina Austin: And I think the fact that they came away with films that we could send to the pardon board, and send to the INS officials, really drove home the point that there was a role for them as producers and directors. So they got a lot out of it, and hopefully the clients did. I just can't see asking someone to sit for one interview or two interviews when the person has real needs, without producing something that was useful for them as well as the student. The person who got the clemency video can show her employer that she is actually working on getting her record expunged, and the asylum seekers could actually show the video to their friends, to the kids' schoolmates, to show that they were very grateful to all the assistance that they got. So it's real important that there's a payoff, and the more professional, the better.

Peter Decherney: I teach a course called Copyright and Culture, and it's about the impact of copyright law on the production of culture. I generally have students write several assignments, and in place of one of the assignments, I give them the option of doing a video assignment. There's no specific assignment; I actually allow them to write their own assignment and find a way in which a video assignment would fit within the confines of the course, a way of exploring intellectual property in a hands-on way. And I've had a huge variety of work, all very good. One student, for example -- I'll just give two quick examples. One student created his own character, his own animated character, and went through the process of licensing music and background material. That was a great experience for him, and really enlightening for me. Other students have used public domain material, Creative Commons license material to create new kinds of work. In every case, this has turned out to be more work than writing an essay, and in a lot of cases I think, reveal things that writing an essay would never have revealed, very practical things.

Louise Krasniewicz: I'm teaching two courses that are cross-listed with anthropology and cinema studies, and in both courses I've opened up student projects from writing papers to doing visual projects. It's not just limited to film. And part of the reason for that is that this semester I have 80 students and, honestly the thought of reading 80 papers is not as appealing as the thought of looking at 80 media projects. But there's really much more than that. I'm very interested in students learning that production is not a single cause/effect relationship between having an idea and creating a production. That if they're going to study media, they're going to study films, if they're going to study any kind of media, they need to know what goes into the production, because they'll have a better understanding, theoretically, of how these things get made and why they are made. So my students are doing anything from video mashups to faux film trailers to comic books. One's doing a dance, some are doing music compositions, and the idea is for them to know what goes into a production in order to be able to step out and say something theoretical. Each one of them is assigned a popular mass market film -- Pirates of the Carribean, RV, just some of the strangest films -- and they have to connect it to a film that we're doing in class using an anthropological theory. And they find that connection difficult, and that's good, because to connect two films that seem to have nothing in relation to each other, but to use a theory that ties them together is what they're doing in their projects.

Regina Austin: I teach at the law school. I'm the director of the Documentaries and the Law project, and I also teach a course called Visual Legal Advocacy. I believe that visual legal advocacy is the wave of the future, that lawyers will be producing and directing their own short films on behalf of actual clients. So I start my students about the task of learning how to produce and direct documentaries for real people. I don't believe that film should be wasted. So my students have produced clemency videos on behalf of formerly incarcerated, formerly arrested persons who are seeking pardons. My students have also produced an asylum video on behalf of an ethnic Chinese Catholic family that is about to be deported. This semester, they're doing things like making a film about the pardon process, making short films in both Asian languages and Spanish and English about visa consultants who are defrauding immigrants who want to stay in this country. I hope that my students understand that it's important for them to know how to make a film so that they will be better producers and directors of films once they go into actual legal practice.

Jacqui Sadashige: I teach several courses for the Critical Writing program, and as you might expect, most of the assignments consist of short critical essays, film reviews, op-ed type pieces. But at the end of the semester, I like to set collaborative learning assignments for my students, and the past several semesters in my courses, I have assigned them video-related projects. In a course on Race in Popular Cinema last semester, I assigned them "mashups with a point," and I asked them to create not a mashup as in a remix trailer but something more akin to a mix tape or a compilation and to imagine that that would be used as a teaching tool for future classes. So last semester the students created four of these projects, most of which are available on YouTube. One was highlighting racism in Disney, and that one I thought was particularly successful. It spotlighted the different ways in which different racial minority groups have been portrayed by Disney -- not surprisingly, African Americans, Latin Americans and Asian Americans -- but students also produced videos on the representation of gays and lesbians in the media, the differences in office practices from 1950s learning videos to "The Office," and this semester I'm really looking forward to projects that they're doing. They're making short videos on identity at Penn.

Andrew Lamas: I teach in the Urban Studies program, and in a recent course called Community Economic Development, my students made a variety of films on readings that we had been doing in class. During the break, during the week-long break during fall term, my students went out to a variety of places in the city and across the country making videos on themes that were in the readings. One of the most interesting films involved students who went down to New Orleans. The students made a film which juxtaposed the official tour guide bus tour of New Orleans with an alternative tour done by an anarchist group in New Orleans, and the resulting films was a juxtaposition of two different ways of seeing New Orleans.

Jacqui Sadashige: One of the things that I like most about this assignment is that it is truly collaborative. Students are very, very hesitant to work with one another on something as simple as a simple film review, but for some reason -- I guess because they see that the task is much more challenging, they see that it does take more than one person to put all this together -- they're very, very welcome to the idea of working with one another in creating a video project and understanding that one person simply can't do, perform all of the tasks. One of the great things about this is it gives them an insight into the filmmaking process itself. So if they're viewing films in the future, rather than fixating on the idea that a single director or a single actor is somehow responsible for the whole, they understand that it's a collaborative project. In terms of the assessment, one of the things that I've included is -- two things I've included is group assessment, so the videos are screened at the end of the semester and students are asked to score them, one of those works in terms of content and form, so everything from how smooth were the cuts to how appropriate was the music to "did you get the point of this?" And then each student actually has to submit a written reflection on the process. And not surprisingly, the students very, very quickly understand that even though the projects are very, very different, that there is an overlap in critical writing and creating a video, that the whole idea of editing, speaking through another person's language, speaking through another person's medium, those are all built into the assignment. So they actually end up teaching me, I felt, how those projects were very, very closely related to writing itself.

Louise Krasniewicz: Let me talk about the students. I was a little surprised that students didn't have the skills that I assumed they had when I assigned a media project. So I gave them a range of options of what they could do, from video to animation to music, and each student I think something that they were comfortable with. They had to make a proposal, which I think is really important, that they propose what they're going to do and then have to discuss it with me and my teaching assistant and that we give them feedback before they start. And then we do a series of workshops to prepare them, so that those who are doing video needed to go through a workshop so that we knew that they knew what they were doing and that they wouldn't get in too deep. And at that point, we had some students switch over. The assessment will not be done on a traditional aesthetic scale where we just judge how beautiful or what the quality of it is, whether it shows up on YouTube and is watched a million times. We really are interested in concepts that they're getting across. And one of the things I've found that the students were very nervous about this, so we added on to the assignment a one to two page essay where they could explain the theory that they think they're trying to use to connect these two films. They were much more comfortable with that, that they had the option of putting it into text. And I'm more comfortable with it now because it gives them a chance to reflect a little bit more on what they were trying to do and then put it into words if they feel the images don't work.

Peter Decherney: That's interesting. I tend to do the exact same thing in that they write a short essay that goes along with the project that helps to explain what their goals were, what their particular goals were, what they got out of it. And that makes it much easier to assess the project. And also a really important point, that you're not always looking for aesthetics, that it's a good film. It has to fulfill the assignment, whatever that is, and it could be very different from the kind of project and the kind of assessment that you would see in the School of Design, for example.

Jacqui Sadashige: I think mostly I'm surprised at the finished product. Whenever I set a video assignment, I imagine some choices that the students might make. One of the other classes that I have is a course called In the Zone. It's a critical writing class, of course again, and it's on visual representations of the body in the media -- many sports films. And last semester I had them do short three to five minute films. They had to make the films themselves. And all I said was "the ultimate sports film in three to five minutes." And so I imagined one minute: angry coach yelling at young person; second minute: young person succeeding in some sports endeavor; third minute: reconciliation, much applause and hugging all around -- triumph. And I was really surprised at the range they came up with. One group filmed themselves discussing what would be the ultimate sports film and then after each person discussed his or her own idea, you cut to a sort of internal visualization of what that might be. Another group tried to pinpoint a pivotal moment in American sports history, when we went from the past glory days of Hank Aaron and Michael Jordan to the followed days of today with steroid controversies and so on and so forth. So they were very, very different from what I expected, and I find just seeing their creativity defies my expectations, but is always a really, really wonderful moment.

Peter Decherney: And just a follow-up question, what would surprise the students the most about the assignments?

Jacqui Sadashige: The level of difficultly, commitment, involvement and time involved. That's definitely the biggest surprise, especially when it comes to editing.

Louise Krasniewicz: The thing that surprised me the most was, we assume all the students are out there making videos that are going up on YouTube and on their websites, and they don't have the skills that we assume that they have. So that was the first surprise. And the second surprise, coming from the students, was how fearful they were of committing something to a visual format and the idea that I had several students that said, "I don't do visual work." And I say, "In this class, you will do visual work." And the third surprise is how much they love it when they do it. They just need the push, and they need the skills. They need a little bit of training and background skills. But when they do it, they get so excited. But the surprise for them, of course, that all of us have run into, is it takes a lot more time than they imagine. I try to tell them to start early, and it's always last-minute panic. And I say, I make an announcement in class, I say, "There will be tears." And there are. But I think it's so wonderful for them to know that they can make something, something that communicates. And it's not instead of writing, it's something you do in addition to writing that shows it's another form of communication that they need to know how to do.

Andrew Lamas: Yeah, I read a book a few years ago by Jacques Ranciere who was writing about the French enlightenment. And he told a story of a professor that did not speak the language of his students. And he wanted to teach them a language that neither of them knew. Okay? So the professor doesn't speak the language of his students, and he's going to teach them a language that he does not know and that they do not know. In a lot of ways, that's the situation I'm in with digital film work. I've never made a film, and my students have made fantastic films. And how could that be? So in some ways, I set the experiment up on purpose this way. I, on purpose, have never learned how to use Final Cut Pro; I've never learned how to use any of the digital video editing software. As a way of being able to demonstrate to my colleagues that you, too, can do this. You know, we all agree that making good films is a collaborative process, but I also think teaching how to make films is a collaborative process, and that I have found that I have joined in to collaborative relationships with the Vitale Digital Media Lab here at Penn in order to make my films. And in a sense, they've joined with me in teaching the class. And so I don't have to know everything about film in order to help my students make film, because there are a lot of resources here at Penn in order to do that.

Regina Austin: Yes, I did start -- I started my students on the path to making films before I had made my own little film, before I had picked up a camera and turned it on. But given that I wanted my students to play the role of producer and director, it sort of made sense. Because I saw myself as playing the role of producer. The most surprising part about teaching this course has been my students' desire to get their hands on cameras and to sit down in front of video screens using Final Cut or iMovie. And we could go over to the Commons. I send them there to get introduced to projects. And then they go back to the law school, where we have our own digital lab now, and experiment, try to edit their films and enjoy the hands-on work. And that's been very surprising. And I've even had students make videos when I expected them to turn in papers. And the videos have been wonderful, and yes, we have screened them. You can find them on our website.

Jacqui Sadashige My advice is two-fold: Seek help from places like the Vitale Digital Media Lab, but to really think about what it is you want your students to get out of this. While we're all talking about the surprises, the things that we didn't know the students would get out of it, at the same time, there are projects that fit better than others. Not every class should be making a remix trailer. There are podcasts, there are morphing programs that are available so that you could show the changing picture of something over time, there are virtual reality programs. So really think about what you want to do, and if you talk to somebody who has done these sorts of projects or go to somewhere like the Media Lab, they will show you a world of possibilities. Think about that, so I guess also start early.

Louise Krasniewicz: I do believe you need to know how to do these things to know the range of things you can offer your students and to help them along the way. I have a media production background, so I'm completely comfortable with it. But I can understand that if you don't, it can be really intimidating. And my advice is to learn how to do some of these things by coming to the library and using the resources here, but also to just get online and look at hundreds and hundreds of videos. That's how you see what people are interested in, what are the common forms of video communication or image communication today, and to know how to assess things.

Andrew Lamas: You know, I think many of us and many of our colleagues have used film in classes. But if you experience is like mine, I have often encountered -- or have used a film in class -- but have wished it would have moved in this direction rather than in that direction. Or that I felt like it made three of the four points that needed to be made about the topic, but not the fourth point. I've found in my conversations with colleagues that if I can engage them about the ways in which they may have used film in their own classes and how those films have proved advantageous but have fallen short in some way, that that's a wonderful moment to say, "Well, why don't we make a film that addresses that other point?" Or, "Why don't you have your students critique the film that you've used and have them make a film supplement the film that you're already showing. So that's another way in.

Regina Austin: We started with the Documentaries and the Law project, and we have amassed a very comprehensive library of documentary films, most of which relate to the law, some of which don't. And I encourage my colleagues to show films, and if I come across a film that I think would be of interest to a colleague, I pass the title along. So we start with documentaries, we work on lawyers, trying to convince them that visual legal advocacy is important, it is something that their clients need, and it is something that they need to know how to do. The world is changing, and institutions of higher education are also changing. There's a whole lot of talk about branding and getting your name out and being a player in the public sphere. And I think that video is an important tool.

Jacqui Sadashige: I don't know if I would call a central part in expression in writing, but it's definitely a potential component, digital writing. There's so much writing that's happening that crosses boundaries -- blogging and including streaming video -- that there is already an obvious overlap, and it's just ... Take for example, when you look at ancient Roman literature. People didn't speak the way that they wrote. It's a separate language. And what we've been teaching students in the classroom, traditional writing, probably bears a similar relationship. And in asking them to engage in forms of digital writing, it's probably bringing the formal classroom writing closer to spoken conversation.

Andrew Lamas: You know, most of my colleagues were trained in their discipline and not in writing. But nonetheless, they feel very qualified to assess writing. So I think, in a lot of ways, we're in that same situation. I mean, a lot of us spend a lot of our lives writing, but in fact, we haven't been trained as writers. So it's really quite the same with video, isn't it? I mean, we've grown up watching TV, we've grown up watching movies, and I think many of us are more capable to do assessment of film than we actually realize. But my own sense is that we're much more capable of doing this evaluation than we think.

Peter Decherney: In some ways, I don't find assessing video projects significantly different than assessing any other kind of written project. I know what the goal of the project is, what the goal of the assignment was, I know what the students are trying to do. I also feel like it's important to have some experience behind a camera and editing yourself, so that you know how much work they've put into it and what they're capable of. And so in some ways, the same tools that we use to assess any other assignment come to bear equally on a video assignment.

Andrew Lamas: One of the things I've done to level the playing field in that regard is in one assignment, students made 15-minute films, but I required them to look directly in the camera for three minutes of the film and to talk about the subject that the film addressed.

Regina Austin: Law students are not used to working in groups, so this is an opportunity for them to do something with others. I think it's very hard to be creative and original in a traditional legal research paper, but with a film there's great opportunity to do something that's different, that exercises some of their creative muscles. And so I think they really enjoy the opportunity to do the research -- you have to do research. Nonfiction films is first and foremost about research. To do research, but also to interview real people who either have problems or are in the business of helping people find solutions to their problems. My students work with real filmmakers because I want to train them to be producers and directors. So we avoid some of the technical problems that would arise if they were doing the actual production themselves. And then they come up with scripts, and then they set about working with the filmmaker to get the short film made. I grade them based on effort, because I think effort in really important in filmmaking and you can see it in the finished product. Some groups don't actually finish the product, and that's an indication of how much effort and commitment there was.