How do we, as teachers, get students to understand that the different elements in videography – angling, movement, positioning of shots, voicing, selection of shots, etc. – generate certain meaning in establishing their personal identities?
Using a video clip or a film as a teaching resource in the classroom seems to be less of a dream these days. The fact that pupils are well exposed to these modes (after undergoing various multimedia courses) makes those resources appropriate to engage and lead them to achieve a more critical understanding of what is presented, represented or more so perpetuated in them.
As an extension or complementary step to using these resources, teachers should consider and encourage pupils to become videographers that explore their "real identity" and generate certain meaning when establishing them. So, pupils must firstly undergo a course that explains the technicalities of videography skills as mentioned above.
Now, for them to discover what matters to them or who they are in the first place, I think that it can be achieved by getting pupils to experience various situations that they are unfamiliar with. I strongly believe that one's true character or personal identity will finally surface when pushed to the extreme. Therefore, these situations must be carefully crafted and may also be situations which reflect a 360-degree turn from the life they encounter.
For example, pupils may visit the boys' home or girls' home or even a community service trip to any neighbouring country and think about how people their age are coping or living their situations. Prior to this trip, teacher must first tap on the technical skills that they learnt and examine a couple of documentary-like clips with regard to issues that are pretty much opposite of their lives in Singapore. The following could be an exemplary clip that could be shown to pupils:
After showing the clips, teachers will engage pupils in a class discussion of how the videographer of each clip had used the elements mentioned and based on those elements, the kind of meaning or message they got from it – be it how the music matches the visual they see, the impact of zooming in and out of the picture or even how text complements the thought of the participant represented and many more.
Teachers will then lead them to reflect on themselves, what they like or dislike about their lives and then compare it with the people they are visiting. With the skills they had learnt from the videography course and knowledge on the elements based on the discussion, pupils will then record probably a 2-minute clip in which what they feel importantly for and their individual perspective on the issues are shown through the positioning and selection of the shots as well as the angling, voicing and etc... This would also mean that viewers would comprehend the attitudes, beliefs and values of each pupil just by watching what they portray in the clips and thus pupils would have successfully communicated and established their personal identity through placing what reflects or is of importance to them in the video.
