Beginning with Robert Neal’s 1913 article “Making the Devil Useful,”
teaching with film is arguably the single most persistent thread within
the English Journal archive when it comes to major media. When
you combine that with articles about video—which more often than not
looked to film as its primary influence, whether that be by having
students produce their own films using video recorders or viewing films
in class on videocassette—we have a conversation that essentially
stretches across the entire century we surveyed for this study. The
following assignment descriptions are adapted from and influenced by
noteworthy English Journal articles on video- and (excuse the
pun) film-focused pedagogies.
And the Award for Best Supporting Role Goes to . . . As
we saw in the earliest days of English Journal, interest in
teaching with film didn’t necessarily happen in a vacuum, but was at
least partly influenced by parallel interests in using other visual
artifacts such as prints, slides, and stereographs to teach literary
content. It’s therefore important to understand our media forms not as
isolated and discrete, but as part of a broader ecology that includes
other media, cultural influences, and genres. In that vein, you might
consider teaching your students more about film through the process of
making a “supporting text” in another medium—namely, a movie poster.
For this assignment, you could have students working in small groups
design and create film posters based on hypothetical films tied to
recognizable eras and/or genres (e.g., fifties noir, eighties slasher,
seventies sci-fi, nineties rom com, etc.). After doing some
preliminary research on similar films and their promotional posters,
the students then compose some mock-ups, after which they can use
graphic-editing software, art supplies, or whatever tools they feel
comfortable using to create their finished product. Visually, posters
should ideally align with the overall aesthetic of the era, as well as
the conventions and commonplaces of the particular genre. You could
conclude this assignment with a gallery showcase, having students
explain how their design choices reflect their understanding of film
genres.
Subtitles Reimagined In the 1936 article “Writing
on the Screen,” an unnamed contributor engages in a bit of
future-casting, imagining the artistic potential of the photoplay as
it evolves to incorporate sound, color, and other technical
advancements and become a legitimate and respectable vehicle of
artistic expression (imagine!). In one instance, the author envisions
a future in which the use of subtitles can be used in innovative ways,
writing, “The showing of foreign-language photoplays with English
subtitles superimposed upon the lower part of the pictures perhaps
points the solution of the age-old problem of presenting unspoken
thought, which Eugene O’Neill unsuccessfully attacked in Strange
Interlude” (413). You might design an assignment that similarly asks
students to reimagine the use of subtitles in creative ways other than
recounting dialogue and diegetic sounds in designated scenes: the
characters’ unspoken thoughts as the author describes, but also
critical observations, a satirical “director’s commentary,” a
technical breakdown of shot composition, comments comparing the clip
to similar scenes in other films, and so on. You could even lead
students in a workshop using captioning software such as MAGpie or
Camtasia, YouTube’s captioning tools, or similar solutions to actually
incorporate these subtitles into their respective scenes.
Side-by-Side-by-Side While we’re big fans of
production-oriented pedagogy, we recognize the value in effective
reception-based activities as well. Several English Journal
authors over the years have written about helping students learn to
critically view, appreciate, and analyze films (Abbot 1932; Weeks
1951; Yetman 1952). In many cases, these articles describe having
students watch a single film, often based on a literary classic, in
order to discuss it in isolation. But thanks to the passage of time,
many of these classics have been remade—sometimes several times
over—which invites the opportunity for deep comparative analysis.
Teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? Hold up the famous
balcony scene from the original play alongside Zefferelli’s faithful
1968 film and Baz Luhrmann’s highly stylized Romeo + Juliet and
talk about the similarities and differences in performance,
directorial style, use of sound, and so on. Or if you’re teaching a
unit on science fiction, you could have students read H. G. Wells’ War
of the Worlds in addition to listening to Orson Welles’ 1938
radio drama, watching Spielberg’s 2005 film adaptation, reading the
graphic novel adaptation, or engaging any of a number of other media
translations (there have even been several video games based on the
novel). This could evolve into a robust study of how differences in
the choice of medium impact how the narrative is conveyed and
received. Given the recursive nature of popular culture, the
possibilities are wide open.
From Improv to Storyboard . . . and Beyond! As
we’ve often seen in our previous chapter on audio, limitations to
technological access don’t always get in the way of effective media
pedagogy, especially when you rely on your students’ imaginations and
the available tools at hand. In fact, it can sometimes be more
fruitful to focus on a medium’s conceptual elements—syntax, grammar,
style, rhetorical conventions, etc.—by stripping out the “noise”
associated with working with unfamiliar technologies. in 1985, Alice
Cross explored this potential in her guest column “Electronic Media:
Two Exercises on Film Manipulation,” where she first had students
improvise a scene involving a tardy student confronted by the teacher
in class, a performance followed by retroactively constructing a
storyboard that deliberately used long, medium and close-up shots for
dramatic effect. While we really enjoy this low-tech, hands-on
approach to teaching students about shot composition, we suggest
taking Cross’s activity a few steps further by having students
subsequently re-perform, record, and edit the footage according to the
storyboard as a way to integrate conceptual and technical learning
about film.
Coming Attractions In 2004, Callahan, Meg and
Bronwen E. Low’s article, “At the Crossroads of Expertise: The Risky
Business of Teaching Popular Culture,” recounted the process of
students making spoof documentaries as a means of demonstrating their
understanding of genre (one project, on the topic of mouse
infestations, was based on the sensationalistic docuseries When
Animals Attack!). Callahan and Low were impressed by how well
students took to the challenge, writing that “Most projects
demonstrated that the students had extensive, though usually tacit,
knowledge of popular media genres and techniques” (54). In a similar
vein, you might consider asking students to create parody remixes of
movie trailers, which itself is a popular internet genre, as
these examples illustrate. For this assignment, students use
video editing software, YouTube downloading sites, and other resources
to create a remix of a movie trailer that disrupts, complicates, or
otherwise challenges the underlying ideology of the original. They
might convert a romantic comedy into something that highlights its
creepy stalker factor, foreground the slapstick nature of the
run-of-the-mill slasher film, or update a classic for today. Although
students can incorporate some original content in the composition,
this is primarily an exercise in rearranging, combining, and
transforming preexisting material. As an added measure to ensure
critical thinking, the remixed trailer can be accompanied by a 2–3
page reflective statement that explains the underlying argument of the
remix, as well as the technical means taken to achieve the finished
product.
Flip the Script In 1987, Patrick Mikulec’s article
“Video-English” advised that the alphabetic script should come before
visual composition, both in terms of process and importance. We
suggest turning Mikulec’s advice on its head and reversing that order
in order to foster creative, generative composing practices that place
more value on the visual. Working from Mikulec’s own assignments, you
might have students combine original and found footage to produce an
abstract video version of a musical “tone poem,” which is meant to
suggest a particular mood, pacing, and transformative “movement” of
some sort. Students might then use these video compositions as
inspiration to compose their own written poems as an addendum or
accompaniment to their video pieces. Similarly, you might shake up
Mikulec’s video-report assignment by having students, working in small
teams, initially compile and edit video footage about a particular
topic (e.g., a pressing social issue, local news event, a popular
hobby, and the like). They would then swap their footage with a nearby
team, and they would both generate scripts based on that footage,
recording narration, and producing a final edit of the project. The
challenge of such an approach is for students to create a cohesive and
coherent visual narrative that strongly suggests, rather than
supplements, a “pre-written” script.
published by the university of
michigan press as part of the sweetland
digital rhetoric collaborative book series.