Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The Muppets
The other day I had the good fortune to come across a documentary film entitled, "Being Elmo". This film chronicles the journey of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who created the Sesame St. character Elmo. This film had CEP 882 written all over it. Viewers are given an inside look into the process and thinking behind the creation of some of the most beloved Muppet characters as well as the motivation and personality of the people who bring them to life.
In the film, Kevin recalls the first time that he saw Sesame St. on his television. Oddly enough his first impression was not of the actors or the Muppets themselves. Instead Kevin reacted to the setting of the show and how it resembled his home, an impoverished Baltimore neighborhood. I immediately thought of the genius of the set designers and how hard it must have been to design a space that was both visually unique and familiar to the audience. The designers used lighting and proportion to give Sesame St. the illusion of a much larger and complex space.
How does this relate to education? Think of the importance of the environment created for this show, a show designed for the express purpose of educating children. It is a place children want to inhabit, to become a part of. It is a comfortable place because it resembles home and it becomes an interesting place due to the new and interesting characters that populate this space. As educators we could learn a thing or two from Sesame St. about the importance the physical environment plays in the learning process. We need to create environments that are simultaneously comfortable and engaging in order to get the most out of a student. Perhaps we could spend some time populating our classrooms with a character or two and if we are lucky a child will be too busy having fun to realize he/she is actually learning.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Not so NICE
All that I have previously known about interior design I
have gleaned from many hours spent in my recliner, reading books, while my wife
watches HGTV. One particular show that
she likes to watch has couples searching for their perfect house. As the couples are shown a house that they
enjoy, they almost always reply with something similar to the following
statements:
1.
“Wow! This is nice!”
2.
“This fire Place is nice”
3.
“I really like this kitchen, it’s a nice kitchen”
4.
“The bedroom has nice square footage”
These are just a few out of millions of responses from
couples on this show that have highlighted, emphasized or suggested how nice
something is. In Sarah Suskana’s
introduction on home design she mentions the lack of a common vocabulary to
describe why a space feels like home. I
could think of no better example of this than my wife’s favorite TV show.
The connection to education is one of vocabulary, when the
teacher lacks the proper tools to describe an experience or fails to build a
fundamental vocabulary related to an experience, then that experience will
become extremely hard for the student to reproduce. How could someone ever make a house feel like
home if all they know is that home feels “nice”.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
My brother and his spoon
I’ve wanted to write something about how this class has affected how I am
looking at the world around me. I keep
thinking of my brother who is an engineer.
Growing up he was always analyzing simple objects. He would pick up a spoon at a diner and ask
why it was shaped the way it was, what material was it made of and why and what
are the decisions one makes when creating a spoon? Of course I always thought he was kind of
weird, a spoon is just a spoon.
Now here I am asking these same questions about all manner of mundane
objects. How could that object be
photographed to make it more interesting?
If I made a video of that hallway could I use it in an interesting
video? It has become a short term
(hopefully) obsession the result of which is that I have begun to annoy myself
in the same manner my brother used to.
I am reminded of initial class discussion about art as an approach to
learning. I am starting to make strong
connections between artistic approach and curiosity. What teacher wouldn’t jump at the chance to
make their students curious about the subject matter? So I am seeing the importance of the artistic
approach in the classroom. Keep in
mind that this class is about the "nature and design of compelling
experiences." With that in mind, I'd like you to focus your discussion
about the Super Bowl Commercials on these two broad areas:
Video Project
You can also click the link to view the video:
Commentary:
The idea for this video started
more or less by shooting with limitations.
Being stuck in the Neonatal ward of the hospital almost every minute that
I am not actually teaching made for a tough environment in which to find
compelling video. There is a strict photography
policy in the hospital that allows photos of only your child and their environment
as well as hallways and generic hospital environments. Couple this with specific instructions to stay
away from the sentimental (and babies were used as a specific example) and I
was feeling sort of hemmed in. Due to
the time limits I chose to approach the video as kind of commercial for the
neonatology wing of the children’s hospital.
Everything
in the hospital is numbers, people are hooked on to various monitors, there are
clocks, charts, percentages, and counts of everything that is happening and
could happen in the future. When a
doctor talks to you, most information comes in the form of numbers, measurements
and readings. There is a sense of
anxiety that comes with these numbers, they bring good news and bad news, move
slowly, or quickly. I wanted to capture
that sense of anxiety as well as the feeling that as the numbers come and go,
are given and taken away, life continues to fight on.
I
picked the washed out drawing effect for the video because I thought that it
helped reinforce the sterile feel that hospitals tend to give off, also it
helped to provide continuity between shots that had drastically different
lighting and colors (the elevator numbers as opposed to the clock). Also the white quality gives an impression of
hope to the viewer.
I tried
to edit the different shots so that they were somewhat the same length but not
chronologically symmetrical. For anxiety
to happen we cannot know the exact moment of an edit. I slowed down the speed of each segment by
half to make the viewer hang on to each number change, again an attempt to
build anticipation.
The
captions are an attempt to give context to the video without giving away
exactly what the point is until the very end.
I would have liked to have replaced them with a great voice over; unfortunately
I did not have access to a trained actor.
The placement of the words as they appear was a bit difficult to get
right with the software that I was using.
I wanted them to add to the film but not distract from the video. I tried to have them appear and then disappear
within the span of a single shot and be located in a place that keeps the eye
searching for the next set of words but does not draw attention away from the
video itself. I feel like I got this
mostly right except for the first clip and the image of the zeroed out digital
clock. I fiddled around with different
fonts and coloring but in the end I kept it simple because it seemed easier to
read and carried a serious tone with them.
At
first, I tried to incorporate music in to the video but I was having a challenge
finding something that struck a somber tone but then finished off on a high
note all within the span of fifty seconds.
Instead I chose to leave the film silent until the very end, where I faded
in a subtle heart beat. I wanted to show
the ability of the video to be compelling on its own as well as use the lack of
noise to increase a sense of anticipation.
I chose
not use the drawing effect on the very last shot because using it made the
image of the baby hard to make out and in doing so, the final “reveal” less impactful. The black at the end of the video gives the
viewer time to reflect on the video and I left the heartbeat sound in there to
help spur the viewer into further thought.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
family films
FAMILY FILMS, THE NEW BABY, VIDEO PRODUCTION AND EDUCATION
I have been looking forward to this unit since the beginning of the class. If there is one art form that I really am excited about it would be film. Like many people, I love movies, T.V. and video. However, unlike most people I know, I have always liked the design behind the experience. I have always been at risk of sounding like a film snob by making commentary on a films score, editing and visual effects. My wife often looks at me like I'm a geek when I dive into the special features on a new DVD or watch a whole film with the directors commentary on.
Now since I have been looking forward to this unit the most, this of course would be the time for my wife to go into labor a couple of months early. Because we are talking about making videos here is one of the kiddo.
I made this real quick for my other kids so that they could better understand what was going on with their baby brother and why mom and dad have not been home lately. Hopefully it plays for everyone. Obviously there was no thought behind the design of this video, yet for some reason, it got a pretty emotional reaction from family members.
Now here is a video that took me about a day to make, it was a quick job so please forgive the spelling errors. Unfortunately for me, my family is scattered all over the country. Instead of sending out boring slide shows of the kids each year I try to add a little production quality to the experience. What follows is a birthday video that I made for my son, it is full of familial inside jokes so don't be worried if you do not understand some of the comments.
Why am I showing this? As far as the class goes, I think that it is relevant to make some comments as to the effort and consideration that went into making something as simple as a family video. Editing was very difficult, all of this was shot on a digital camera, there was no a lot of footage to work with, especially for the dance sequence. The length of each video clip had to be cut down precisely to best fit the beat of the music. The same font that was used in the movie, 'The Lord of the Rings" had to be found and the color matched up. There was not too much that I could do about the lighting of the film but I tried to sprinkle some transitions between shots just to smooth out the change from one scene to another. I tried to include the same components that would be in a large motion picture presentation into my own film, such as: ratings, disclaimers, title sequence, story and credits.
With out the extra design elements this video would have been a boring experience if shown at my sons birthday party, instead it become something people wanted copies for themselves. This simple addition of production value also holds true in the teaching environment. If we made silly little videos about the periodic table or the quadratic formula that were personalized and involved people within the school, would the learning experience be more effective. Personally I think it would be.
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