Reflection on Composition

With Composition, I find myself a little out of my depth, which is good because I have the opportunity to learn a lot about something I knew next to nothing about before.  When we were recording the footage for our Editing Exercise last week, I told Emily that when I take pictures my instincts are to break all of the rules: to center everything, to place the horizon in the middle of a shot, etc.  Granted, my inexperience with photography and shooting video was such that I didn’t know I was breaking any rules.  However, it makes sense that I’ve never been too enamored with anything I’ve shot. 

            I look forward to teaching these composition principles to my future classes (both Language Arts and Film).  One thing that makes English Language Arts tricky (and possibly the reason that so many students don’t like English classes) is the difficulty in making abstract concepts more concrete.  There’s not just one correct way to write, nor is there one correct direction to go in a narrative, argumentative, or expositional paper.  So much freedom seems to overwhelm students, young and old, as writing continues to be an elusive thing for them.  I mention this because it’s always refreshing to teach material that is more concrete/skill-based. 

            True, composing good shots is as much of an art as it is a science, but students should be able to know if they’ve done a shot correctly or not with some immediacy.  When I write objectives up on the white board, I do so with the intention of introducing concepts/skills that students will be able to master in a short period of time, if not after one class period.  That doesn’t always happen with a traditional writing objective (“Students will strengthen a claim with at last two pieces of evidence,” for example).  In a composition assignment, I imagine students understanding the difference between what’s good and bad, simply because they get a clear visual of the examples and they have clear objectives: “Students will compose a shot that follows the rule of thirds,” or “Students will shoot a series of shots that includes a wide shot, medium shot, and close-up.”  I don’t want to undersell/underestimate composition or make it seem easier than it is (after all, I’m still a novice, having become familiar with some of these terms only a week ago), but I do think it is something that will make sense to students.