New Course Development: Filmmaking & Video Production

I spent the summer developing a new filmmaking course I will be teaching this coming school year. Planning assignments and projects, creating equipment demonstrations, and finding movies and scenes to aid lectures made up a bulk of the labor, however, my greatest takeaway is rooted in a question that I ask myself every semester. What is stopping so-and-so from going for it? What’s giving them the most fits? While I’m sure there are many answers, it’s become more evident that, with the growing complexities of our projects, there needs to be a better approach in mastering the tools we use in our Photography (and now Filmmaking) classes. Be it scrolling through a deep menu to find the most cinematic settings, changing camera lenses, clicking dozens of buttons before printing, or even mixing chemicals for analog processes, I have come to see how certain students can forget that they are actually taking an art class. This is a different experience from my own where I got practice through repetitions at school, on a gig, and even during my free time. I have no doubts the more passionate students will find those reps, but how about those who are more on the fence (or even those who just struggle with technology)? In this regard, many students not only fear failing creatively, they fear failing and breaking something! This roadblock results in a lack of practicing outside of class and when there is no one around to help. Those, in my opinion, are the most vital for fostering creativity and experimentation. I hope to approach all my courses with a three-pronged approach. The first two simply being a matter of creating a better class atmosphere during demonstrations and allowing more free time to “just play”. The third is revamping the resources I provide to students that is better tailored and more conveniently accessible. As they stand, the resources I provide are videos that essentially summarize how to print, how to mat, how to etc… They are a mix of things I sourced online and of my own making. The original content is better received due to the relevance to our class purposes. That being said, having to scroll through a video may not be the more appealing medium when students are needing a quick answer; something they can find on a cheat sheet, for example. I plan to outfit several high-usage pieces of equipment with these notes this year as a trial run. The test not being so much the resource, but having them readily accessible via a QR code. For example, we will have three production kits in our Filmmaking course. Each contains camera, lenses, rigs, boom microphones, etc… and tucked in the equipment bag will be a stack of QR code cards, each that will send students to all the “answers” so they can feel confident when on their own. I hope this will help enable students to feel more confident in practicing with the tools we use.