Video: Foundations and Acceptable Genres

This week's readings took a multifaceted look at the complicated medium of video. David L. Bruce's article in Miller and McVee's text was really interesting in the fact that it gave me some very basic knowledge of how video actually works. Bruce calls this the "grammar of video". As with the grammar of a language, you have to understand it in order to be successful in intaking or producting a video in the best way possible. This brief introduction s very helpful to me. As a wrote last week, I'd like to incorporate a movie/video project in my classroom if I get the chance in the future, but without understanding simple things like the names for different shots, I now realize just how unprepared I'd be for doing this. I really look forwarding to learning more about the langauge of film in class this week. That will help me do a much better job on my proposed video project.
After this quick debriefing by Bruce's article, I moved on to get an interesting contradictory message in Lund's article. Though Lund pushed for how valuable video production could be in the classroom, he says that "students typically suggest projects that imitate their favorite television shows: MTV music videos, violent car chases, or Beavis and Butt-Head humor. While respecting students' desire for ownership of the project, the teacher must tactfully guide them into more acceptable genres" (Lund 79, italics not original). This statement made me cringe. I'd love to see students turn The Great Gatsby into an MTV music video or The Catcher in the Rye into a Beavis and Butt-Head style comedy. I think the solution is not to stifle the creativity you are originally trying to work out of students, but instead to help them channel it. Suggestions are a great idea, but the idea of acceptable genres reminds me too much of all the things that turned me off of multimodal assignments when I was in high school. Guidelines, specific requirements, and a check-with-me first policy should allow students to be creative without producing a video that doesn't achieve what you aimed for them to achieve.