creativity
by stephen pick
on
Nov 5, 2009 at 11:33:52 am
hi
i teach in a small college in the uk and wondered if there were any other video production lecturers who could share some ideas with me on teaching creativity?
in a video production course it could become easy to get bogged down teaching the technical aspects of the course. students - and everyone else, it seems - are obsessed with the quality of picture over the actual quality of, say, the story they are telling. this leads to flashy productions that are lacking any sort of creative thought other than that of lots of technical effects.
so, does anyone have any thoughts on how we can get creativity back on track at a beginners level? does anyone have any ideas how to present these ideas in a teaching or training environment? has anyone got any examples of trying to solve this problem?
That's a tough one... I'll have to ponder a bit. But have them watch movies...read books on SCRIPTWRITING. David Mamet has a good one on directing that really is about writing.
Re: creativity by Mark Suszko on Nov 5, 2009 at 4:17:04 pm
For me, creativity comes out of working within limitations; I consider 30-second spots and music vids to be like haiku poetry. Even in a 30-second spot, I think you can show a character and plot arc. My joy is to make the spot work and look good on as little money as possible; I got an award once for a spot that cost me like five bucks to make. I really don't know what I would do if I was ever given a "real" budget.
As far as your kids, I think you start them out small and limited, so they learn to create rather than just push a button or invoke a plug-in to solve a problem, and as has been said already, the real job is story telling, and the technology is only to support that story.
So take away the technology at first. Make them do flip-books.
Go back to first principles, try stacks of note cards, and teach the kids how to arrange and re-shuffle these cards to tell the same story in different ways. Go back to the birth of montage theory, re-do the experiments of Kuleshov and Pudovkin. Give them all one common pool of footage and assign them to make a sequence that's funny, then one that's dramatic, etc. all out of the same footage. Make them watch each other's work and see how many different takes they come up with on the same theme. Also point out where they all seem to think alike, and ask why.
Have them do five-minute radio plays with music and sound effects to evoke locations. Instruct them that anybody's play that uses the phrase: "Well, here we are in ___..." to establish a location gets an F for the exercise. Give them MOS footage and require them to supply all the dialog as well as room tone, background noises, foley, and music. Sound is under-appreciated in what we do, so make an extra effort to just do sound for a week. Have each kid invent a foley effect out of household materials, record it, and use it on something. Play them a sample of Albert Brooks doing Foley for a bad sci-fi picture sequence in his film:"Modern Romance".
Show a clip of MST3k and have a screening of some bad movie where the class makes the comments in the same manner.
Make them all use one common set, say an elevator, and do skits based around it.
Assign them to each do a five-minute film that must include one common prop, phrase, and sound effect used by all the entries.
Kids are natural experts at fighting and exploring limits, it is what they try to do every day, so let them put their energy into making the most out of a limited raw material. See how many things they can improv out of a simple everyday object. Give them modeling clay and ask them to use it to depict something subjective like an emotion.
Do 3-point lighting exercises but also have shadow-puppet contests at the same time.
None of this is expensive or technologically challenging, rather, that's the point; if you first learn to make something out of nothing, then when you get your hands on real resources, you will make much more out of them, because you can look at them in more and different ways of using them than just the obvious ones.
Re: creativity by Scott Sheriff on Nov 5, 2009 at 6:34:43 pm
I agree with Mark Suszko that limitations are a good idea.
Limits on length of finished project, amount of footage shot, amount of time to work on a project, and limits on effects, especially shot transitions. Everyone that edits needs to know how to work with cuts only. All good starts. Limits not only teach thinking out of the box, but how the real world works.
Watching movies, and classic rock videos are also good places to look for creativity. Especially films done before CGI, Blade Runner comes to mind as an example of a pre-CGI FX film. A lot of the 80's videos are on YouTube, and many were done on shoestring budgets.
Another exercise would be to do promos for TV shows or movies, or commercials for popular products. Again insisting on some real world length limits, such as delivering a :30 and a :10, and not allowed to go over by even 1 frame. Things like this should have an assigned target, they shouldn't be allowed to pick their favorite shows. Even better if it is something that is an older show they wouldn't be familiar with.
Last if you have students that gravitate towards a particular skill, make them switch to a different job and get out of their comfort zone.
Re: creativity by Zane Barker on Nov 5, 2009 at 5:56:56 pm
[stephen pick]"who could share some ideas with me on teaching creativity? "
I don't think that you can teach someone to be "creative" however you can teach people how to do creative things. And some people as they learn to do creative things may become more "creative".
"Creativity" is about how one thinks, and you cant really teach someone how to think, all you can hope for is that as you teach them how to do creative things that they will learn to think creatively. But some people never will.
There are no "technical solutions" to your "artistic problems".
Don't let technology get in the way of your creativity!
Re: creativity by stephen pick on Nov 7, 2009 at 3:28:37 pm
hi all
hi all,
thank you all so much for your insightful replies. there are definitely some patterns here. some of the replies here are fantastic.
i love the idea of imposing limitations on projects to encourage the students to think creatively to solve problems. ill definitely be using these ideas.
its right to start at the very beginning and take away that technology. it seems to make people lazy and think they can solve it all in the edit.
a silent film and then a post dubbed film is a great idea. before that we can even look at no tech at all with flip books etc.
have you guys any advice on what lessons to use on different age groups? say, gcse (1 year, 16 year old), A level (2 years, 17-18 year old) and degree (3 years, 18 plus)? it would be great to have a clear 6 year plan of progression...
