I found a project through Twitter for teaching students to think like a filmmaker. The project, for grades 6 to 8, is written by Judy Storm Fink and is published at the NCTE website, readwritethink.org. The project title is You Know the Movie is Coming—Now What?. This is a complex project with lots of supplementary material. As someone who sees very few movies I think that the ability to teach this as written would depend in part your own familiarity with the books and movies discussed. Some experience as a filmmaker would also be helpful. That said, this is a well thought out project which will, at the least, offer you lots of ideas for getting your students to think about the difference between telling a story with words and telling a story through video. The hook for the assignment as Fink proposes it is that there will soon be a movie released based on a familiar book. Given how easy it is to show a movie in class I don’t think it necessary to tie this project into a topical new release. Perhaps my biggest critique of this project is that its goals are too narrow. I see this project as a way of getting kids to understand that thinking about filmmaking helps them think about the mechanics of storytelling in general. It teaches that your perspective as an author changes as you change formats of any kind, whether that is a change from poem to short story — short store to novella — novella to novel — or words to video. Along with changes in perspective that format changes entail, so too there are changes in the literary devises used to tell the story. Fink’s project focus on the technical devices of moviemaking. This is the project’ s strength but also I think its weakness. To teach the methods of filmmaking without being a filmmaker will be difficult. Two lists are provided, one (the online list) more detailed than the other. Many of the terms are complex in that they suggest a world of possibilities. From the online list I offer ellipsis by way of example: A term that refers to periods of time that have been left out of the narrative. The ellipsis is marked by an editing transitions which, while it leaves out a section of the action, none the less signifies that something has been elided. Thus, the fade or dissolve could indicate a passage of time, a wipe, a change of scene and so on. A jump cut transports the spectator from one action and time to another, giving the impression of rapid action or of disorientation if it is not matched. You could spend many writing projects on the ellipsis in a written narrative. The transposition to film is clearly complicated. This brief introduction to the concept lists five different cinematic techniques for implementing an ellipsis. Overall, I’d slow this project down, and simplify the exploration of cinematic technique. I’d work with one scene in one story and explore different ways — different cinematic techniques — that could be used to tell that story. In the same way, one might take that same passage and turn it into a poem which would make it possible to speak about the techniques of poetry as a literary form in the context of this project which requires students to think about the how of storytelling more than the what of the story. Lastly, making a film ought to be one of the possible products of the assignment. Take a look at our resources for young filmmakers pages to give your students some ideas about how they might do this.
Teacher Resources
Teaching Detail in Creative Writing by Kids: Observational Writing
In the Collected Maxims of the German writer, W. G. Sebald (1944 –2001), he is credited with offering this advice to writers: ‘Significant detail’ enlivens otherwise mundane situations. You need acute, merciless observation. Observation provides a foundation on which writers can build. It is, of course, not observation alone that makes Shakespeare or Dickens or Melville or Tolkien the great writers that they were, but keen observation underpins their work. Personally, I have spent a great deal of time with Dickens reading for fire references for a book I wrote on hearth cooking, The Magic of Fire (2002). Dickens is, in fact, one of the best sources of information on how people related to the fireplace and how they actually used it to cook. I took a train once through Scotland on a late summer evening. A volano-shaped mountain topped with orange stained clouds read Mount Doom of Tolkien’s Mordor. Moby Dick is an example of a novel built on observation. One way it tells its story is through a series of discreet observations — a meal of chowder in a busy inn, the nuances of the color white, the harvesting of ambergris — all tied together through the animating character of Ahab, a classic study in the obsessive self-destructive personality. With children whose literary foundation is heavily influenced by mass culture — Netflix videos — blockbuster movies — it is especially important to try to focus them on observation of the world of real people and real objects in order to provide them with a vocabulary that can animate their stories with a sense of real life. The art in literary writing is, in part, the art of finding the words to describe the physical world in a way that gives life and depth to the imaginary world of the story. As it is not easy to draw the room you are sitting in with a pencil, so it is also not easy to paint that room with words. I think the trick to succeeding with observation exercises is simply to get your students started. Let the depth of their observations — or more accurately put — the depth of their literary descriptions of what they see grow slowly by accretion. Color will come with time and practice. Please feel free to share your experiences teaching observational writing. Examples from your students are welcome.
Historic Photography by Kids
The Kodak box camera, first produced in the 1880s, became the iconic camera for the amateur photographer. The camera was as easy to use as our phone camera’s. Point and shoot. Even a child could do it. And even children did. Photograph by Anne Burrow, age 13, 1914 The best source of historic photographic images by children is in St. Nicholas Magazine (1871-1940). The first editor was Mary Mapes Dodge, author Hans Brinker and the Golden Skates, until her death in 1905. In the early 20th-century St. Nicholas Magazine innovated the publishing of writing and art by children. They were unquestionably the first major publication to take the creative work of children seriously. The title of this image, “A Lucky Snap-Shot” does not really live up to the image. Now that the issue of photography as art is long settled we can appreciate the image for the work of art that it is. For me, what is most striking is the intensity of the horses’ gaze. Ears and eyes on us. They look at us as sentient beings. The framing is remarkable. If you draw an X from corner to corner you will that the horses mouths just about exactly reset on that line. A very simple set of photographic experiments can be derived from this image. Print out the photo. Draw and X corner-to-corner. Have your child or students take photographs thinking about where the central image — the face — the dog — the flour — the building– is situated in relation to the actual center of the image. As with digital photography you can take as many images as you like without incurring cost you and your students can experiment with how the feel of the image changes with framing.
