Using filmmaking to teach students about Shakespeare, Urban Regeneration and other stuff!
Claire Allam, University of Sheffield
Abstract
This paper describes work carried out at the University of Sheffield, using video as a means of enhancing student learning about their subject area by encouraging them to engage with it in a novel way. The results have been highly successful, and the paper highlights the skills and knowledge that students can acquire ranging from the obvious - filmmaking itself - to more transferable skills such as collaborative working, problem solving, IT, negotiation and organisational skills. Within the student’s own discipline, research skills can be fore-grounded, but perhaps most interesting and important, the level of ‘real’ engagement with the subject can significantly increase when the student is faced with the creative challenge of using a new medium.
The difference between making drama and factual films is dealt with in some detail, and the different learning outcomes are described. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the students’ range of skills, not to mention working practices, varies across the subject disciplines and this fed into their filmmaking experience.
The use of filmmaking has proved a highly motivating factor in student learning, and the paper makes substantial reference to student feedback collected over the past five years, demonstrating students’ own insight into their learning.
Getting students to communicate using moving images and sound rather than text has proved highly stimulating, but the learning curve can be very steep and appropriate levels of support need to be given, which can be time-consuming for staff. Questions of sustainability are addressed and the Filmmaker’s Toolkit is described, which has been produced to allow a more stand-alone approach to filmmaking. However, this offers only a partial solution. In order for the learning experience to be worthwhile in the context of the curriculum, the author argues that a certain level of expert tuition is required to run such programmes.
Biographical details
Claire Allam has worked as a producer of multi-media learning resources at the University of Sheffield for 10 years, following a successful career in television. Her commitment to film-making as creative act has inspired her to share this with students as a means of enhancing learning. She was awarded a University of Sheffield Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in 2004 and completed an MEd in July 05.
Using filmmaking to teach students about Shakespeare, Urban Regeneration and other stuff!
The projects I describe here are the result of my work with academics who wanted to motivate their students and to see if enabling them to engage creatively with their subject would enhance their understanding. Together, we were attempting to see if using the process of filmmaking as a learning tool for students would give a positive outcome. Our conclusion is that it does, and on several levels. What follows details work over a six year period, with varying levels of financial and time investment.
Setting the scene
The University of Sheffield funds several initiatives to enhance learning and teaching includinga centrally funded department, the Learning Development and Media Unit (LDMU). Among a range of other services LDMU offers resource and advice to individual academics who want to develop innovative teaching practices, through the Learning and Teaching Development Grantscheme. The majority of the projects described here came through this scheme, although recently there has been a shift from this which I will discuss later. Since 2000 I have worked across four subject disciplines with academics who wanted to incorporate filmmaking into their teaching for a variety of different purposes. These were: English Literature (3 modules: Playing Shakespeare, Directing Shakespeare, Editing Shakespeare); Architecture (part of an urban regeneration project); Hispanic Studies (the work of Galdós); Information Studies (multimedia module). The films can be divided into two broad categories, drama and factual, and I will describe both in some detail. I will conclude by looking at issues of sustainability for projects such as these.
Apart from the institutional support for such projects, a high level of commitment was required from those taking part. The academics involved were frequently taking a step into the complete unknown which can be very challenging (one confessed she was ‘absolutely terrified’, though happy enough with the outcome to want to repeat it the following year!). My own background is in TV production. I did a degree in film and photography then worked as a video editor, producer and director in the industry. In 1996 I joined the University, first as a producer of educational TV, then as producer of learning resources. This shift has given me a much closer connection with the learning and teaching process, which has sparked my enthusiasm for work with students in a teaching/facilitating capacity.
Why?
In a traditional red brick university like Sheffield, students have tended to learn in a very ‘academic’ way. The skills they use are analytical and theoretical, and they are rarely asked to use their imagination. Added to this, they most often work as individuals rather than in groups, in a competitive environment. Increasingly, academics report that some students appear to be motivated only by the mark they are likely to get for a piece of work, as opposed to getting any enjoyment from the work itself.
Making a drama
The literature students studied the work of a particular writer from both text and existing films and then produced short sections of the play or novel as films. In requiring students to make a film, you demand that they put sometimes quite complex ideas into the medium of moving pictures in combination with sound. Most of the students had never made a film before, so there were many new skills to learn. They had to draw their own storyboards, direct and edit the film, imaginatively interpreting the text, and creating their own response. This led to a very close engagement with the writers’ work:
To be able to take Shakespeare and … completely put your own ideas on it … to change King Lear into a northern gangland boss … it does kind of give you more of a connection with the text if you can take it away and make it yours. (English Literature student)
Obviously, the students needed support in doing this. Because filmmaking is a process, and in this case was being used as a learning tool, it was important that students were enabled to get through each stage. As a facilitator, perhaps the most interesting aspect was to gauge how much support to give and when to ‘back off’. It was highly rewarding to see the students’ confidence grow, but that can only happen if they are not totally in the dark. Harland acknowledges this: ‘The students knew that we were never far away, and this gave some security and a safety valve when the going got too tough’ (Harland 2003, p.269). For example, it is worth making sure that students shoot enough different shot sizes, and ones that will roughly cut together, rather than letting them discover that they have not done enough when they get to the edit suite.
In setting a creative challenge, the academic takes quite a risk. Time is tight, so it is important that the students do the work on time, so the next part of the process can take place. There is a strong element of trust, where the academic relies on the students to source all the things needed: actors, costumes, locations, props etc. These are new and unusual tasks for students. Perhaps most important, the student has to turn up! In a collaborative activity, responsibility towards one’s peers is fostered, and team-working becomes vital. The students’ attitudes towards group work significantly improved and this type of experience has very useful benefits beyond university life, as well as being highly beneficial in the learning environment. MacConnell observes:
When participants are willing to give time to co-operative learning processes and negotiations, the outcomes are extremely favourable, and the time involved seems to provide them with a real sense of engagement and collective identity. Their work together forges a sense of community. Although time consuming, the potential benefits to them in developing trustful relationships, which in turn will support and foster their collaborative work, are enormous. (MacConnell 2005, p.39)
The creative act
The students’ enthusiasm meant that they worked very hard:
With an essay often when you’re writing it you are just thinking about picking up marks and what you’re going to get but with this it was really the work in itself as well … I cared a lot more about the actual product itself. (English Literature student)
So what is it that students enjoy so much about filmmaking? Apart from the novelty value, I think it is because they are allowed to give reign to their imagination, and to be creative, which involves a whole number of skills:
Creativity seems to involve synthetic, analytical, and practical aspects of intelligence: synthetic to come up with ideas, analytical to evaluate the quality of those ideas, and practical to formulate a way of effectively communicating those ideas and persuading people of their value. (Sternberg and O’Hara 1999, p269)
Asking students to work creatively requires them to employ openness, subjectivity, intuition, emotion and imagination (what might be termed divergent thinking skills); in combination with the convergent thinking skills of logic, reasoning, analysis, objectivity, judgement, as well as the practical requirement. Apart from the discipline-specific knowledge that the students acquired through close interaction with the text, the experience gave students skills in collaborative working, organisation, IT, communication and negotiation.
The final product
The quality of the student films was surprisingly high. The final session of each module was given over to screening the films, and constructively criticising each other’s work. Some of these sessions were filmed, and the student feedback has proved invaluable. We encouraged students to reflect on their learning by including a learning journal and portfolio as the main assessed part of the module (in combination with an essay). The films themselves formed only a very small part of the assessment.
Factual films
Having spent 3 years working with English literature students, my next project was with students of architecture. These were 5th year diploma students with a highly developed visual sense, and competent with computer software. Communication, however, is an area that exercises architects: few people find architects’ plans easy to understand, and part of the motivation of the academic involved was to see if filmmaking could help provide a more effective visualisation of the architect’s vision for the layperson. The students were given the option to produce a short film as part of their presentation to academics and peers of their main piece of work for the year. The project concerned the regeneration of Canklow, a run-down area near Sheffield.
Input
The level of support required by the architecture students was much lower than for the drama students. I gave an introductory lecture on filmmaking, and spent half a day with them on location when they first started to shoot their films, but apart from a session showing them how to chroma-key images and a few conversations, I had little input until the editing stage. This can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the architecture students were older and more familiar with the notion of creating and designing, as well as having prior experience with cameras, so they were very happy to go off and film their own material after a little tuition. Another reason for my later input is due to the nature of factual films. Whereas with drama I would argue that a lot of the highly creative input comes relatively early, at the storyboarding stage, with a factual film this tends to be delayed to the editing stage, when the film is created from its disparate elements.
Outcomes
Several students commented on how making the film had forced them to engage more thoroughly with the site (and particularly the people). This is an important element of architectural research. The students also observed that using a different medium allowed them see things differently:
When I was filming a site, that kind of gave me a better understanding of the actual site that I was working with because when you look at it through a different medium, you just take in different things than you would if you were just photographing it. That to me was very helpful. (Architecture student)
The architecture students found structuring their films quite challenging. (The drama students had not had to worry too much about this, there being an in-built structure in the form of the text). In spite of preparing story boards, many of the films came together only at the very end of the editing process, both in terms of structure and use of sound. Duration was another thing that students found surprising: at how little time it took to tell a story. Not surprisingly then, it was the areas that architecture students do not usually deal with in their work: narrative linearity, the temporal aspect, and sound that they found most difficult, but also, perhaps, the most thought provoking.
The students reported that the use of film helped with their presentations. Many of them used their films to introduce the regeneration site, and some made use of interviews with inhabitants. As might be expected, the level of visual sophistication was high. Multi-layering of video-footage with drawings, plans and models gave some beautiful and inspiring results.
The students found the challenge of making the films enjoyable, and valued learning another multimedia skill. They also benefited from the input of professionals from another profession. Being used to putting in long hours building models, they were unperturbed by the amount of time it took, even finding it a relaxing change from their other work. Some have already gone on to make films on their own.
I’d definitely like to use film again, maybe next year, but certainly in the future. I’d like to build on what you’ve started and I think it’s a useful way of showing the project and getting that across.(Architecture student)
Sustainability
The resources required to give students the opportunity to make films, in terms of time and money can be quite high. In the projects I have outlined, at one extreme a group had my support as well as their lecturer’s for each of their weekly sessions over 12 weeks, with extra time for filming and editing. They also had support from the LDMU editor, professional crews to shoot and record their films and professional actors. At the other extreme, the level of support was in the form of a two-hour combined lecture and workshop, with online backup. This was for the information studies project, where students were required to make a two minute informational film as an element in a multimedia module.
One element of the project with the School of Architecture involved the production of the Filmmaker’s Toolkit. This is a DVD-Rom which includes a practical guide to filmmaking and case studies of the student films, as well as an archive of other architecture films produced at the University. The intention is that the toolkit will act as a stand-alone resource for architecture students. It is also a resource that can be adapted to other disciplines and the practical guide section has already been used in both the Hispanic studies module and the information studies module.
Part of my ongoing research is to try to ascertain what students gain from these differing levels of support. It is clearly not sustainable to offer full support very often, as the cost is very high. However, with too little support, the danger is that students will spend too long thrashing about in the shallows of basic filmmaking rather than using it as a tool to promote higher level interaction with their subject. My exploration started quite resource-heavy - the reasons for this could be the subject of another paper! Suffice it to say that technological developments, in combination with my own increasing confidence in students’ ability to successfully take on a substantial task, have meant that there has been a gradual diminution of the resource level required to do this work. One outcome of this is that academics no longer necessarily need to bid for LTDG grants, but can get what they need from smaller-scale, and thus more sustainable, ‘support’ projects.
In conclusion
Including a filmmaking component in the academic curriculum involves a steep learning curve for everyone involved and appropriate levels of support need to be given, which can be time-consuming for staff. However, the students’ excitement at having made their own films, of having chosen what shot goes where and with what accompanying sound to tell their individual story is highly rewarding, for student and lecturer alike and is a great boost for their confidence.