module 01
weeks 01-05
some basics
The information below will give you some sense of the reading, writing, and creative work you will be engaged with during this portion of the semester. There will be variations among each individual course section, so see your instructor for detailed daily schedule, directed writing, assigned reading, activities, deadlines, etc.

learning goals :: topics
Lots of introductions: Mac laptops, electronic journals, camcorders, iMovie. Literacy, visual literacy, semiotics (remember, basic). Thinking, creating, making. Seeing, hearing, paying attention. Video as a language for expression and communication. Exploring content selection, sequence, and timing as variables in the authoring process.

readings :: electronic reserves
creativity
"I Walk into a White Room", Twyla Tharp
"Rituals of Preparation", Twyla Tharp
"Your Creative DNA", Twyla Tharp
"Before You Can Think Out of the Box, You Have To Start With a Box", Twyla Tharp
"Scratching", Twyla Tharp

visual literacy + semiotics
"The Vocabulary of Comics", Scott McCloud

narrative
"The Significance of Film Form", David Boardwell

journals
Your instructor will give you all the information necessary for creating your electronic journal.

Journal entries and directed writing for this module will focus heavily on two issues:

creativity :: developing creative habits + methods
Directed writing assignments will be closely linked with the Twyla Tharp readings above. They are excerpted from a book titled The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life. It includes a number of writing exercises that will be used in this course.

paying atttention :: hunting + gathering
This is closely related to creativity. As part of your journal work you will be expected, everyday, to post a journal entry called 10 Things I Saw Today. This list can be text, still images (ala your cellphone even), and/or short video clips. Students are encouraged to mix it up and use multiple inscription technologies to record and collect what they see, hear, and experience. What do you pay attention to? What draws your interest? What is memorable? What are you missing?

video exercises
This module incorporates two exercises intended to give students an easy entry-point into video production, and to provide the class with an opportunity to explore some basic aspects of communicating in a time-based medium.

exercise 1 :: noun, verb, adjective
30 seconds

noun
a grammatical part of speech that names a person, animal, object, quality, idea, or time.

verb
a grammatical part of speech that expresses action, a state, or a relation between two things.

adjective (and/or adverb)
a grammatical part of speech that expresses an attribute of something or acts as a modifier of nouns and verbs

process
Carry a camcorder around with you for a day (ideally, everyday, all the time) and start assembling a collection of very short video clips: try just 10-15 seconds. (suggestion: you could also combine this activity with the 10 Things I Saw Today journaling activity mentioned above). Try to collect at least a few dozen of these.

Transfer this footage as separate clips into an iMovie project file. After reviewing each clip, name the clip using one of the grammatical terms above: noun, verb, adjective (or adverb).

Once all of your clips are transfered into your project file and named, review your material. Then create at least 3 different 'video sentences' using your collection. Each sentence should use between 3 and 9 clips. No one piece should be longer than 30 seconds, though.

These pieces can be fun, serious, literal, straightforward, or mysterious. It is required, however, that you have a good time in the process.

Your section instructor will devise a scheme for the whole class to share and view finished exercises. S/he may also base some classroom activities around sharing and exchanging raw project files.

purpose
Become comfortable using a camcorder; develop a habit of always looking and listening — paying attention — to what's going around you; get some experience using iMovie; start thinking of video as a language; experience how editing (choosing content, sequence, and pacing) creates interest and meaning.

exercise 2 :: manifesto/motif
1 minute

manifesto
1. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, organization, or individual.

motif
1. a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition.
2. an important and sometimes recurring theme or idea in a work of literature. Also called motive
3. a short prominent sequence of notes forming the basis for development in a piece of music. Also called motto

process
Your section instructor will show you some examples of manifestos and you will be asked to draft one for yourself. With this text in hand, you will then engage in a process of attempting to translate some aspect of this written text into a video (media) text. How can you transform alphabetic communication into images that move and make sound?

You do not have to communicate the entire contents of the manifesto. Instead you will be encouraged to identify a single component, idea, or motif that you can work with. Is there a particular tone or energy that can be communicated visually? Are there particular subjects, camera angles, editing techniques, sounds, etc. that might relate conceptually to your manifesto?

Your video does not have to be a direct illustration. Instead the manifesto could be a jumping off point, have only a tangental relationship, or be an extension of the written text. You will, however, need to be prepared to describe and explain the relationship between the writing and the video.

A suggestion: review your raw clips and finished pieces from Exercise 1. Look for any hints of recurring interests or aesthetic habits. Examples: you might notice that you shot a lot of doorways or that many of your shots had circular shapes in them; perhaps you have a lot of shots of frenetic movement; maybe you always shot people, but pointed the camera down a lot and only shot their feet; perhaps you shot several clips with only subtle motion, very little sound, and no people. Look for patterns in the way you see, pay attention, and collect.

Are there ways to incorporate these aesthetic habits into this exercise? Is there already a relationship between your thoughts and beliefs, and the way you experience the world and gather information?

Take notes. Write about what you discover and where you think these habits come from. Then hatch a plan for shooting new footage that builds on these reflections.

Your finished piece should be roughly 1 minute long. It should have a clear visual and/or conceptual motif. It should be related in some way to your written manifesto and you should be prepared to explain this.

Review what you learned in Exercise 1 about shooting and editing. Exercise 2 gives you an opportunity to be more intentional about what you want to communicate, and to try creating a narrative that is longer and a bit more sophisticated: How will the piece begin? How will it end? What happens if you think about musical composition as an analogy (i.e. slow, fast, loud, soft, solo, quartet, orchestra)?

Have fun. Take risks.

purpose
Sort of already stated above: you'll have the opportunity to extend what you learned in Exercise 1; think intentionally about how you experience the world and how you communicate that experience to an audience; get even more comfortable with equipment and software.

assessment :: grading rubric
All instructors use a grading rubric based on this template. However, students should consult with their section instructor for specific details. The assigned grade will reflect an assessment of all components of coursework: electronic journal, finished videos, and classroom participation (including personal skills).

Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
Susan Sontag

The photograph and the film, too, changed the nature of cultural communication in America. Unlike the printed word in newspapers and books, the photograph affected even those who could not or would not read . . . The whole idea of the documentary—not with words alone but with sight and sound—makes it possible to see, know, and feel the details of life, its styles in different places, to feel oneself part of some other's experience.
Warren Susman, "The Thirties," Culture as History

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance.
Aristotle, Poetics

Writing is like these [other] arts [architecture, painting, drawing, and music] in many essential respects . . . If other evidence of close relationship were necessary, it could easily be found in the body of critical terms such as mass, motif, movement, harmony, symmetry, tone, color, rhythm, perspective, and point of view, that are common to nearly all the fields of artistic endeavor.
"Composition as an Art" (1913)

Thinking through writing, as I am doing now, is one way of experimenting with the expression of an idea. But thinking through making work is entirely different . . . [B]ack in the studio, the dialogue between the maker and the thing is something quite different: there’s a kind of blind faith, an anti-discipline at work in which the process of discovery is fueled less by what than by what if? . . . What if you shut out the noise that smacks of responsible conclusions and replaced it with loopy questions, fragmented notions, implausible fictions? . . . There’s time, later for logic, for editing . . . for putting up those responsible roadblocks that we all must, on some level, choose to embrace. The studio, at least a little piece of it, is not the place for such duty-bound thinking. Somewhere, somehow, it must be the place for thinking through making.
Jessica Helfand “The Art of Thinking Through Making,” Design Observer

[Ho]w can people concerned with documentary . . . so consistently ignore the audio track of the films and videos they are discussing? Presumably we all know that television emerges out of radio broadcasting . . . [and] that video documentary has, from the arrival of the first portapaks in the mid-1960s, had audio always already present. Can I remind everyone that most video and film documentaries begin postproduction with the logging of shots and transcribing of audio, and then making of a “paper cut” which is built out of the transcribed audio? Can I remind everyone that the “subordinate” parts of a film or video documentary are referred to as “cutaways” that come from the “B roll” and are always and only visuals?
Chuck Kleinhans “Audio documentary . . . ” Jump Cut: A Review ofContemporary Media

This metaphoric use of sound is one of the most flexible and productive means of opening up a conceptual gap into which the fertile imagination of the audience will reflexively rush, eager (even if unconsciously so) to complete circles that are only suggested, to answer questions that are only half-posed. What each person perceives on screen, then, will have entangled within it fragments of their own personal history, creating that paradoxical state of mass intimacy where—though the audience is being addressed as a whole—each individual feels the film is addressing things known only to him or her.
Walter Murch “Womb Tone"