Continuity Editing

(Scene from 10 Things I Hate About You)




This (^) Is the equivalent of a quick and sloppy exercise in shooting and maintaining continuity with a dialogue scene in narrative filmmaking.  By going through the process of editing it, we were all able to recognize (loud and clear) how many precautions need to be taken prior to and during shooting in order to maintain a continuity between shots that allows for fluid cuts between them.  We would have benefitted tremendously from a more concrete bracketing of the script, as well as more detailed and time-specific blocking.  We ran into trouble with inconsistent hair-twirling, and for the second half of the scene we had only 1 shot/take of Mindy to work with.  All of which could have been prevented with better pre-production, and more attentive continuity monitoring during shooting.  However, there is no better way to learn the value of watching for continuity than to have to confront the way it can ruin a scene in post-production!

Media Production Experience: Composition

Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)

There are some aspects of film production knowledge that completely transform the learner's film viewing experience.  At the top of my list (based on my experience) are composition (placement of objects and environments in the image, but also including lighting, exposure, and color balance), editing (juxtaposition), and sound editing (especially foley and dialogue editing). After learning about and trying one's hand at these stages of production, there is simply more to see, notice, and look for when viewing a film.

Dog Star Man (1962-64)

 I've become increasingly attuned to how much narrative exposition is performed in film via cinematography and framing choices.  Almost everything I need to know narratively about how characters, locations, objects and relationships should or will fit into the narrative is explained by the way the camera portrays them.

The Piano (1993)

Having a rudimentary understanding of the psychology of framing and of color, the intention behind a lot of composition decisions becomes easier to read (and easier to critique). Understanding, for instance, the state of rest promoted by adherence to the rule of thirds and the unease generated by more perfect symmetry, or the way that Western Audiences read lateral action in one direction (left to right) differently than in another (right to left), or the eyeline assumptions made by a shot-reverse-shot sequence, or the way filters and color balance are used to evoke very specific color-associated emotions intended to be applied to the diegetic world of the film.  All of these understandings combine to make it more enjoyable to watch impeccable work, and easier to distinguish the distinct differences between amateur and professional level camera work.  In that sense, it's a fair equivalent to basic studies of composition in art and art history, and shares some of the same value.

The Tree Of Life (2011)

Because I feel that it is safe to assume that there is value in teaching these concepts and skills to students who are not necessarily bound for a career centered around them, I can feel called upon to defend the value of that knowledge, that developing a critical eye is valuable for both producers and consumers of visual mediums.  But in the digital era of the present, it is not only professionals who are producing media as a part of their day-to-day lives.  In an age where every business and most individuals are maintaining an online presence, the need for the creation of engaging, reasonably polished original content is indefatigable.  The democratization of media-creating-technologies has turned every citizen into a potential content producer.  Having the tools to communicate a visual idea efficiently becomes then a literacy akin to being able to write and communicate clearly verbally. And having that literacy promotes a similarly heightened standard of taste as it's verbal counterpart.

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

So, reviewing some basic elements of composition and camera operation, I've been impressed at how a little knowledge (introduced early on) can go a long way in reframing a students' relationship with film and video from that point on.  It seems to me a potent element of media literacy, and I'm tucking it into my arsenal as such.

Theory Into Practice Reading Response #4 - Pop Culture in Literacy Pedagogy and Family Home Media

           Nothing that we've read thus far has evoked so much note-taking from me as Beach and O’Brien’s chapter on Teaching Popular Culture Texts[1].  It was so full of specific examples of application, and precisely defined proscriptions that there were a lot of concrete ideas that could be gleaned and immediately transferred into practice.  I felt this entire article interplayed interestingly with last week’s interview with Robert McKee[2] about the power of making and creativity.  Nearly every suggestion in this Pop-Culture-Text article focused on empowering students as creators of their own texts and as makers of meaning.  I appreciated the idea of bringing the process of learning how to read a text critically to the texts that students are already engaging in with earnestness and delight.  I do, however, see the potential for resistance.  For many people, and especially for vulnerable teens and adolescents, private media habits are intensely personal.  Reflecting upon them critically and publicly requires a willingness for vulnerability that I would anticipate most insecure teens to resist.  (Not unlike Drew’s reticence in About Home Movies.[3])

            I had read Dean Duncan’s article, Family Home Media[4] before.  It came up in context when I took a Children’s Media class from him, long before the rubber hit the road for application in my own family life.  Reading it again from my current perspective was interesting.  I still agree with the concepts in it, but for myself I have a much clearer idea of the work and resistance involved in putting those concepts into practice.  I don’t think the resistance was addressed in either article.

            My 7-year-old son, my oldest, has had a peculiar relationship with media from the beginning.  He has a tenuous, anxious relationship with videos and film, and he refused on pain of panic attack to watch anything with a plot until he was 4 and a half years old.  We still have to introduce new texts to him very carefully and often with bribes. He’s also revealed an unusual propensity for fixation, even for children at ages naturally prone to fixation.  This severely complicated my idealized vision of my own “family home media,” and I’ve never actually managed to steer it back to where I’d originally hoped it to be.  But I have learned to work with what I have.    I was interested to see how my willingness to work with my son and the media he was willing to engage with often paralleled the pop-culture-texts teaching described by Beach and O’Brien.

            Along with a host of other long-suffering parents, I have become well-versed in children’s media characters and constructed realities that my younger self would have scoffed at.  I have learned to engage with my son in creative play and discussion revolving around Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Lego Star Wars.   Certainly a part of me resists this because I perceive it as “low” art.  And certainly I’m still trying to compensate with more “high art” in areas he’s less resistant to, like bedtime reading.  But as much as I’d perhaps prefer his creative play to not revolve around licensed characters, that doesn’t mean that there is no creative value or potential for critical analysis in that play. 

            I felt that both Duncan and Beach/O’Brien addressed the need to help adults, parents, and children reflect upon their own relationship with media and how it could be refined and enriched.  They both encouraged adult/teacher figures to model critical thinking with casually encountered texts for the children in their care.  I think they even both encouraged blurring the distinction between the teacher and the learner in these conversations.  The biggest difference I felt between these two conversations was that the end goal of one was literacy skills while the end goal of the other seemed to reach further – to the becoming enlightened and improved by the sort of critical encounters with texts that literacy can facilitate.  Certainly Beach and O’Brien were less discriminatory about what texts are deserving of our deepest focus.

            My biggest question coming away from Beach and O’Brien’s article was whether allowing for more focus on pop-culture literacy will ultimately leave some students unacquainted with “high culture” texts that might have otherwise stretched them.  I can easily see the value in helping kids engage more thoughtfully with the texts they are already immersing themselves in.  But I think I’d personally resist doing that at the expense of exposing them to perhaps more meritorious material.  Or rather, while I’m willing to find ways to work with Lightning McQueen and the Wonderpets, I’m still looking forward to the possibility of sharing some delight in meaty polysemic cinema with my son.

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[1] Beach R. and D. O’Brien. (2008). Teaching popular-culture texts in the classroom in Handbook of research on new literacies. Eds Coiro, J., M. Knoble, C Lankshear, and D. Leu. Lawrence Earlbaum. NY.

[2] http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/studying_creativity_in_the_age.html#sthash.ipn5vuoZ.dpuff

[3] Best example, see: http://abouthomemovies.org/2012/10/30/love/

[4] http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=47

TIPRR#3 - Media Literacy, Story, and Creation

According to Cmdr. David G. Smith[1], the U.S. military has begun changing gears in training recruits. In accordance with advances in behavioral science, instead of promoting cohesion by dehumanizing individuals, they are teaching recruits about the history of their service. Thus far it is a measurably more effective means of increasing their camaraderie and ability to attach and commit to their unit.[2]

That story would be more powerful than force in creating real, measurable change in the values and commitments of a people should not be surprising.  As Peter Forbes[3] said, “You cannot demand a different world, you have to inspire it.”[4]

Indeed, it is increasingly apparent that what constitutes the culture of any group or civilization is the story that they share and the values inherent therein.  Harold Goddard said, “The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.”[5]

Forbes seemed especially concerned about what happens when intentional and value based stories are replaced in our culture by “inauthentic” stories used in advertising.  He relayed a strong argument for valuing story more prominently as a culture, and using it to more virtuous ends.

Forbes quoted Ben Okri as saying, “Stories are the secret reservoir of our values.”  Okri has also said, “A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation….Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.”

There needs to be a cultural revolution in recognizing that story is an inextricable part of the human experience. That humans require stories to function is evidenced by the effectiveness of narrative-based advertising.  “You’re not selling product x, you’re selling a story.”  That we keep buying these stories (by buying the products that promise those stories to us), is evidence for the role of story in human development. Unfortunately, as Forbes expressed, the consumption of such stories leads to disconnection, rather than the connection that we need from our stories. In Crow and Weasel, Barry Lopez[6] says, “If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. “

Forbes strongly promoted the use of story as an impetus for constructive social change.  He says that stories should be about relationships and communities, not about products or consumerist appetites. Leslie Marmon Silko[7] agrees, stating, “I will tell you something about stories …They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death.” Forbes points out that in order to create positive social change, the culture has to be re-storied.  Legislative action is inadequate because “laws codify values – they don’t create them,” and the culture will not maintain a law that is not in-line with the collective story and values of its people.

The Co-Intelligence Institute has said, in The Story Paradigm[8], “Story can help us deal with causation, comparison, function, implications and context, as well. But it goes beyond understanding, description and control into the realm of mutual involvement, a realm where analytical reason becomes reductionist, inadequate to the task. The more nuanced, subjective, interactive and non-measurable a relationship is, the more story surpasses analysis in dealing with it.”  This is congruent with Forbes’ argument that story can be more potent than rhetoric.  “Stories help us imagine the future differently… a new story that helps people find their way out of the old story.”

Forbes indicated that authentic stories will define wealth as being about relationships, and not money.  Story itself is a powerful binder for catalyzing and maintaining healthy relationships.  In a 2013 New York Times article[9], Dr. Marshall Duke said that in studying children after 9/11, “[Those] who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could [better] moderate the effects of stress.”  He indicates that those who have a strong sense of the story of their family and community, beyond their own experience, had a stronger relationship with their families and a better resiliency toward life experience. Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he … call[s] a strong “intergenerational self.” “They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.”

Stories frame the way we see ourselves, our relationships, and the world we interact with. Robert McKee has said, “Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

Stories are valuable both on an individual level and collectively.  The experience of encountering and processing or internalizing a story is definitive.  But so is the experience of crafting a story.  The digitally connected age in which we live has the potential to give voice to many more stories, but it also alters the author/audience paradigm.  If more people view themselves as contributors to an overarching community of story, the authority and exclusivity of authorship may be diminished, but the invested community grows.

In his interview with Henry Jenkins[10], David Gauntlett said that “Through making things, you feel more of a participant in the world, and you feel more a part of it, more embedded because you are contributing, not just consuming, so you’re more actively engaged with the world, and so, more connected.”  He emphasized that the value of creativity is not necessarily the output or product of creation, but the unquantifiable “happiness” associated with the process of creating. 

This certainly applies to authorship and story, as well as to any facet of participating in a creative act. This unquantifiable happiness is described by Deiter F. Uchtdorf[11]: “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.  No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before

The process of participating in creation, even the broadly-defined “everyday creativity” described by Gauntlett, fulfills Joseph Campbell’s[12] experience of being alive: “People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.” 

By broadening the definition of “creativity” to include anyone joyfully making something they have not made before, Gauntlett creates a paradigm that allows for the voice, experience, and perspective of any willing storyteller to be valuable, when constructed into a narrative creation.  This democratic definition invites the statement by Karen von Blixen-Finecke (pen name Isak Dinesen), “To be a person is to have a story to tell.”

There was concern, however, coming from Amy Ogata’s interview with Jenkins[13] that promoting the creativity of everyone, especially children, has in the past become a commercial construction that aims to “overlook difference while simultaneously selling exclusivity.”  She said it is “hard to escape the rhetoric of creativity used to sell items for kids.”  Indeed, when creativity itself becomes a story used by advertisers to promote consumer culture, then the value of the individual voice becomes a double-edged sword.

It may be helpful to revisit Forbes’ insistence that story, and possibly creativity, should be about relationships and communities, rather than commodities. There is certainly rich potential for enriching use of creative story-building here.  The creation of narrative can serve as an exploration of one’s own experiences and identity.  The process can accomplish finding the meaning and clarity that Robert McKee mentioned.

There has been much made of the psychological and physiological benefits of composing one’s own story, and giving voice to one’s own perspective, even if the result is never shared with a separate audience.  Dr. James Pennebaker[14] has explored this concept extensively and his research shows that the process of organizing one’s thoughts and experiences into a story has manifold benefits for the creator, regardless of whether their creation is ever shared.  Even those who immediately burned their narratives saw benefits.  The creative process of organizing and constructing a story is universally beneficial, as Gauntlett may have suspected.

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[1] http://www.usna.edu/LEAD/Division%20Staff/David-Smith.php?iframe=true&width=770&height=620

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

[3] http://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/publications/Power%20of%20Story%202008.pdf

[4] http://www.wholecommunities.org/pdf/publications/Power%20of%20Story%202008.pdf

[5] ― Harold Clarke Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 2

[6] http://www.barrylopez.com/

[7] http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_2.html

[8] http://www.co-intelligence.org/PowerOfStoryLong.html

[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

[10] http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/studying_creativity_in_the_age.html#sthash.ipn5vuoZ.dpuff

[11] https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/10/happiness-your-heritage?lang=eng

[12] ― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

[13] http://henryjenkins.org/2013/05/the-creative-child-meets-the-digital-native-an-interview-with-amy-ogata-part-one.html

[14] Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions by James Pennebaker, PhD

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572302380/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On Reading Digital Social Media

(Assignment for TIPRR#2 was to "Write a section on reading digital social media to be included in a new version of “On reading visual and verbal texts.”" Which is found in Seeing and Writing: 4th Edition.)

Reading Digital Social Media

Social media has been defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of [the web], and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."[1] It includes a constantly evolving set of interactive platforms and applications through which users and the communities they form can share, co-create, mediate and alter user-generated content.   As technology develops, participation in social media platforms is an increasingly integral part of participating fully in any community.

Many social media platforms integrate use of images, video, and text, embedded or linked.  Content shared within these contexts often share characteristics with advertising as they seek to grab viewer’s attention from within a screen framework that offers more content than a viewer has time to consume systematically.  Content also trends toward brevity and concision, often for similar reasons.

Some questions to engage with as you navigate and encounter social media content are:

How does my relationship (literal or digital) with other persons who shared, suggested, or created this content affect my choice to view or read it and what preconceived notions of its credibility result from this relationship?

You may encounter some content where it is difficult to even identify the source or creator.  The “social” in social media means that our interpersonal relationships are an added dimension to our relationship with any text.  When a person we admire links to an article or video on Facebook or Twitter, how does it affect our likeliness to choose to spend time engaging with that content?  How does it predispose us toward that content?

Do I recognize that this image or message is constructed?  What is omitted, what is included, and why?

The presentation of “self” that we see via social media platforms is invariably not transparent.  The nature of social media platforms requires that real life be edited into constructed pieces.  How individuals choose what parts of themselves to share, and in what light, is called “personal branding,” and can be constructed or deconstructed similarly to commercial branding.  The images that someone chooses for their Instagram feed are in this nature similar to a Public Relations campaign.

Can I identify the evolving “cultures, subcultures, genres, codes, and conventions”[2] that contribute to the way this message is presented?

Each time you encounter a parody or remix on YouTube, you might ask how many layers of assumed cultural understanding lie between your experience with the text and that of someone encountering the text from another time, planet, or continent.

Can I identify how the audience played a role in determining the content and tone of this message?  Do I recognize my active role in interpreting meaning? 

Especially in the post-Web 2.0 era of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google Analytics, many professional social media content creators are basing their content choices on measurable audience behaviors.  All social media content is created to be seen and shared by others, and that awareness of “others,” affects the process of creating the content.  Conversely, as you encounter a blog post, your experience with that text is unique from that of every other reader because of the blend of social background, experience, and mood that you bring to your encounter.

Do I have an understanding of the commodified commercial realities that underwrite social media?  Can I see how they commodify both users and content and shape the parameters of what is and is not shared?

Social Media platforms are created to make money.  Occasionally, as in the case of Facebook, the methods of commodifying the platform are developed after the platform has evolved and matured somewhat.  The commercial nature of social media sites can be as blatant as side-bar ads, or as nuanced as allowing content creators to pay to make their posts more likely to appear closer to the top of more people’s feeds.  In the marketplace of social media, the commodities are users and the currency is content.

Am I prepared to challenge the “naturalness”[3] of value assumptions that underlie this message?

Largely because of the brevity of most social media content, large swaths of social, moral, and economic common ground is assumed in most messages.  When a Pinterest pinboard of interior design images is curated, it seems to be assumed that the audience will agree that these images represent a desirable aesthetic ideal, rather than oppressive bourgeoisie opulence. Especially as social media uses tend to gravitate toward content that agrees with their moral and social beliefs, it can become difficult to identify those beliefs and assumptions within the content and separate them from the text itself.

Can I recognize that audience participation in this platform is not a substitute for being a critically engaged “active audience,”[4] nor for social action?

There are a lot of examples of non-constructive participation in social media in the comments section of just about any online news article.  Simply sharing and commenting online does not constitute the “active audience” that is engaged in critical thinking. Highly emotional responses, while they serve their own functions, are often not maximizing critical engagement with the source text.  A critical participant in Social Media should strive to evaluate texts on their own terms, and carefully consider points of view, social contexts, credibility, and intended audience. Their responses and comment participation should reflect this careful, close reading.

Do I determine quickly whether I agree with or disagree with this message?  Am I able to acknowledge the social dimensions of my thinking and analysis?[5]

Every user of social media has a finite amount of time to devote to it. This requires choices about what content to engage with, and for how long and with how much intensity.  It is impractical to advise that all content be given equal consideration, but each user should be aware of what factors frame their choices in this context. The predisposition of many to only invest in content that reinforces their accepted worldview does not make for an expanding social media experience. 

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[1] Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media". Business Horizons. p. 61.

[2] Canada's Ontario Ministry of Education's Eight Key Concepts, British Film Institute's Signpost

Questions, The Center for Media Literacy's Five Core Concepts, and so on. See the latter's website at:

http://www.medialit.org/bp_mlk.html

[3] Barthes, R. (1998). Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang. (p. 11)

[4] Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/Decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, media,language (pp. 128–138).  London: Hutchinson.

[5] Ferguson, R. (2004). The media in question. London: Arnold