Simply put, I had two general goals
for this class—to become more technically proficient at filming and to develop
media-related curriculum for my own classes this coming school year. Regarding my first goal, I can honestly say
that I am more technically proficient at filming than I was before the term
started. Granted, I didn’t have any experience filming at that point, so
any acquisition of knowledge was more than I knew before. I have a ways to go before I’m making movies
that I’m satisfied with, but I feel like I’ve been given the tools to improve
through repeated practice. Before the
term began, I didn’t have any real experience with cameras; I didn’t know what
white balance was, nor did I know how to manually control a camera. I didn’t know anything about lighting
principles or sound editing, and I wasn’t familiar with Adobe Premiere. While I’m still just touching the surface
with all of these things, I'm at least headed in the right direction.
My second goal—to develop media-related
curriculum for my classes—was a success, with as much credit due to my
classmates as to me. I feel satisfied
with the lessons/units I came up with—even before discussing what we would be
covering in TMA 680, I wanted to plan a screenplay lesson, a pre-production
lesson (storyboarding, for example), and some kind of filming lesson. We created each of those lesson types, and
then some. I have four times as many
lesson plans as my own, though, thanks to Amy, Bob, Emily, and Mindy. I will not want for ideas this coming school
year, either in my English or Film classes.
Circumstances outside of our
control—namely the compressed nature of the summer term—could have helped me
better achieve these goals. If this
class had been spread out over four months instead of six weeks, we undoubtedly
could have spent more time delving into the intricacies of media production
instead of hovering at the surface. With
that said, I’m content with what I did learn this term and am excited to
continue to learn more about film and media production.
How would I like to see myself in a
few years in terms of using production skills for pedagogical purposes? I would like to get to the point where I’m
teaching some of the concepts that seemed difficult to teach, as we discussed in
class. For example, in some of our
created assignments (mine included), the end product our students make seem
something of a half measure because so much of the production depends on other
skills tangential to what we’re teaching.
It would be easy to have a Narrative project turn into an editing
project since editing is such a big part of putting together a polished
video. Right now it seems overwhelming
to try to teach so much information; with appropriate planning, though, it’s
possible.
A big part of teaching production
skills is dependent on the technology that allows for such instruction. I would like to set my classroom up with the
kind of cameras, editing programs, and other equipment that makes this kind of learning
possible. I need to make enquiries about
available school funds/grants in order to provide these resources to
my students.
I would like to incorporate
production skills in my classroom as a means to further critical thinking. As we saw this semester, there’s no such
thing as learning production skills independently of each other (there probably
is, but the result would not be too appealing).
It’s like music—one doesn’t learn how to play an instrument just by
practicing scales. At some point, a
musician wants to be able to play songs (application of scales and technique,
among other things). I learned a lot
this term about technical aspects of filming, not through isolated exercises
but through their application in fiction and non-fiction filmmaking. I would like to teach the same principles to
my students, making additional tie-ins to literacy.
