Category: EDCI 336 (Page 2 of 2)

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Free Inquiry – Part 3

There are an incredible amount puzzle pieces that go into making a film great but one of the aspects that isn’t talked about as much as it probably should is music.  There are upward of a thousand examples I could give when it comes to iconic musical moments in films like the music over the opening text crawl in every Star Wars movie or the Indiana Jones theme or the first ten minutes of the film “Up” (Docter, 2009) that made everybody cry but, for this discussion, I’d like to use one specific example to talk about storytelling through music.

 

“How to Train Your Dragon” (Sanders, DeBlois, 2010) is, for those unfamiliar with it, an animated DreamWorks film about a viking boy, Hiccup, who is expected to kill a dragon in order to complete his tribe’s initiation into adulthood.  Instead of doing that, he befriends the deadly Night Fury, who he names Toothless.  The specific scene that I would like to discuss is about midway through the film.  Hiccup has nursed Toothless back to health and the two have become tentative friends despite the fact that Hiccup was the one who originally injured the dragon.  Although Toothless is healthy again, his tail fin is missing on one side, meaning he cannot steer himself in the air.  Hiccup, feeling guilty for the part he played in the injury, builds Toothless a prosthetic tail fin.  The only problem is that Toothless cannot control it on his own.  He needs Hiccup to help him fly and thus, Hiccup becomes the first dragon rider.

 

The scene below is the first time that Hiccup and Toothless have tried to fly freely since the dragon was injured.  When the scene opens we hear bagpipes playing Toothless’ theme, established earlier in the film (0:00:00 – 0:00:38).  As Hiccup tests out a few maneuvers using his cheat sheet, his theme joins in on the horns(0:00:39 – 0:00:58).  Both themes are audible during this segment but they aren’t working together.  It feels as though on is always overpowering the other.

 

Next, Hiccup makes a few mistakes with his maneuvers, causing Toothless to bump into some stone pillars (0:00:59 – 0:01: 03).  The two established themes continue to move back and forth, never really coming together, symbolizing that while they are working together, Toothless and Hiccup are not truly in synch with Toothless not used to needing help from someone else to maneuver and Hiccup relying too much on his cheat sheet.

 

As Toothless begins to climb upward, toward the clouds Toothless’ theme builds and builds until Hiccups cheat sheet slips out of its holder and begins to flutter to the ground (0:01:04 – 0:01:20).  As Hiccup grabs for the sheet and his harness becomes unhooked from the saddle leaving Toothless unable to fly and Hiccup plummeting back to earth and we hear some peril music.  It is discordant and tense, intended to evoke anxiety and anticipation in the audience as both Hiccup and Toothless struggle to right themselves (0:01:21 – 0:01:52).  It culminates in the moment where Hiccup manages to hook himself back into the saddle and he lets his cheat sheet go as he finally starts flying on instinct.  We get a key change with both Hiccup and Toothless’ themes finally working together as the characters find their synchronicity (0:01:53 – 0:02:27).

 

During this whole scene there is very little dialogue but you can tell everything that these characters are thinking and feeling through the music.  Partially, this works so well because of the fact that the themes for these characters are strongly established very early in the film.  Having themes that are so strongly associated with certain characters means that a composer can manipulate those themes in order to evoke different feelings from the audience.  In “Up” the “Married Life” theme, a fairly short and sweet melody, is used over and over during those first ten minutes with the main alteration being tempo and that changes the entire mood of the piece but it appears again much later in the film and the audience associates it with those first ten minutes all over again.  This is a big part of the reason that music can be so effective when used in an interesting way.  It allows the audience to make connections back to other characters or moments that were established earlier and can be just as effective at drawing emotion from an audience as the acting or the dialogue, even on a subconscious level.

 

If you find this subject interesting at all, I would recommend going back and watching your favourite movie again, paying particular attention to the music.  You might find some interesting connections that you’s never noticed before.

Reflections – Week 3

Listening to Jesse Miller’s talk about privacy in education was incredibly interesting and brought up ideas and lines of thinking that I really hadn’t thought about before.  There is certainly a need to strike a balance between being available to your students and keeping up clear boundaries.  I remember, in my high school, our drama teacher sometimes got really involved in students lives, especially those who were on the after school improv team.  His familiarity was never something insidious but I remember hearing about improv camp from my friends and being uncomfortable with how much of their personal lives they felt comfortable sharing with him.  It always seemed strange to me.

 

On the other hand, my art teacher was very personable while still having clear barriers around her personal life and also respecting the personal lives of her students.  The most we knew about her life outside of the school we found out from other people.  She would talk to us about art and about our pursuit of further education but she never asked us to reveal any thing about our personal lives and she never tried to connect with any of us on social media until after we graduated.

 

It was also interesting to be reminded that even if the contact that you have with your students outside of school is completely innocent it will be subject to speculation and suspicion around whether it’s above board or not.  Sometimes suspicion can be enough to ruin a reputation even if those suspicions are proven to be unfounded.  It is ever more important to keep your social media presence in check.

 

Additionally, as I was checking things off this weeks task list, I spent some time going through google to see what information could be found about me.  I don’t really have too much of an online presence beyond what seems necessary for communication with friends these days so other than an ancient twitter account that is now deleted there isn’t really much to find for which I am grateful.  This exercise was also a reminder that you can only control what you put out into the world on social media, less so with what other people post about you and even less what is published in news papers that get put online.  For example, several years ago my cousin was killed in a hit and run in Kamloops which obviously prompted an investigation which is often followed up by articles in the local news paper.  Because we share a last name, if you google me you can find those articles with ease.  It’s not something that will affect my job prospects or my future in this profession but it is interesting that, in this age of information, all it takes is a quick google for someone to find out something about you that is so personal.

 

It’s a very good thing to take whatever control you have over your presence online but I also think that it’s important to remember that you can’t control every aspect of it.

Free Inquiry – Part 2

I find it very interesting that there is a sort of universal film language that everyone understands, regardless of how immersed in the world of film analysis they are.  The idea that what the audiences is shown matters just as much, if not more, as what they are told.  A film that showcases this is, oddly enough, “Transformers” (Bay, 2007), specifically, Meagan Fox’s character.

 

Honestly, I have had to look up the name of her character several times during the process of putting my thoughts together about this phenomenon and I’m willing to wager that you don’t remember it either.  I would also bet that if I asked you to tell me one character trait that she displayed that had nothing to do with physical appearance, you wouldn’t be able to.  Or you’d say something like, “Oh, well she was just there to be objectified in the middle of a mediocre to truly not good action movie for men.”  Probably not those exact words but you get the gist.  Also, if this is a film that you really like, that’s totally fine!  My favourite film is “Clue” (Lynn, 1985) and I don’t think that there are a lot of people that would try to argue that it’s some kind of underrated masterpiece.  I certainly wouldn’t.

 

Strangely enough, if you just look at the actual script for the first transformers film, Mikaela Banes, is the most worthwhile and well rounded character of them all (very subtle Michael Bay.  Very subtle).  Not to mention that she is the only main character that has any skills that are relevant to the plot.  Namely, she’s the only one who understands how cars work.  Sam, Shia LaBeouf’s character, accidentally stumbles his way into being the main character of this film.  However, we forget all of that because of how Mikaela is framed, in the most literal sense of the world.  She is treated like an object by both Sam and by the camera through which the audience experiences the film.   We don’t remember what we are told in the script about Mikaela because in visual media, the audience remembers what the camera tells them.

 

The point of all of this is that the visual language of film is in some ways ingrained into the way we watch films.  I recently read an article from film critic, Roger Ebert, where his breaks down some of the basics around visual composition and how there are certain ways of composing shots that have an intrinsic weight.  However, these are not rules and ” To “violate” them can be as meaningful as to “follow” them.” (Ebert, 2008)  These may or may not be consciously applied, but they can be consciously analyzed.

 

Below I have attached both the article from Roger Ebert and a video from film analyst and author Lindsay Ellis who goes much more in depth regarding Megan Fox, dissonance of framing and the whole “Transformers” franchise.  If that’s something that sounds interesting to you, you should definitely check it out!

 

Links:

The Roger Ebert Article

Reflections – Week 2

For class this week we talked about the documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” about a charter school in the United States that was using an inquiry based structure to allow students to learn soft skills like teamwork, adaptability and leadership.  The part that I found the most interesting was near the end when they were giving statistics about the success of the school.  They mention that, in all honesty, they don’t really know how successful that style of learning was going to be in the long term.  The vast majority of students from this particular school were going on to pursue a higher education beyond high school and were being accepted into universities, but there was simply not enough data to be able to tell whether students would excel in a standard higher education system.  I believe that it was my EDCI 780 seminar leader, Kim, who said that learning design is a pendulum.  This charter school is probably at one extreme end of that swing and our standard, test based school system is at the other and what we truly need is to be able to find a middle ground that works.  The pace of the world is picking up and, as people who lived through things like the digital revolution, I hope that we can recognize that and keep up.  I believe that there is a possibility that those of us who aren’t able to follow the swing of that pendulum are destined to be left behind.

 

On a lighter note, and expanding on evolving methods of teaching and learning, I was introduced to the program called Twine.  Twine is an open source tool to help users create branching, non-linear stories without necessarily needing to learn the in depth language of HTML coding.  Once you have the basics down, there is the option to add to your stories with images, CSS and so much more that I have only just begun to explore.  Rich McCue, our instructor for this demonstration shared a presentation that his daughter made that really helped me see this program as a tool that can be used quite effectively in the classroom.

 

Overall, I think that I have gained a little more insight into potential benefits of inquiry based learning design and I have been educated in some of its potential flaws.  With Twine, I feel I have gained another tool in my ever growing tool belt and I have some great examples for how to use this tool to better develop a space for project based learning in the future.  I have linked the story I made with Twine at the bottom of this post so check it out if that’s something you might be interested in!

 

Twine Story

Free Inquiry – Part 1

One summer evening, when I was about eleven years old, I sat down on the ratty old couch in the basement of my parents house and watched the Lord of the Rings all the way through for the first time.  I’m talking about the extended edition box set which consists of about eleven hours of film and about 8 hours of behind the scenes content per movie.  It was the first time that I had seen something that went so in depth into how a film came to be and the work it took to bring this series of movies to fruition.  In the behind the scenes, they talk to make up artists, costume designers, and set designers as well as directors and writers and producers about every little detail and process of creation.  They’re like little documentaries entirely dedicated to creating movies.  It was the first time that I realized that films didn’t just have to be mindless entertainment.  There is intent behind the things that are being shown to you and there are things that are not intentional that inform the viewers experience of the film.  This experience made me start watching films differently.

 

In order to complete a degree in Visual Arts from Uvic, you have to have a certain number of art history courses under your belt.  It just so happens that all of Uvic’s film studies courses fall under the umbrella of art history.  I took two film studies classes in my second year of university and I was hooked immediately.  Any opportunity I had to take more classes I did and then, when I had my final meeting with an advisor to declare my major for graduation, I was informed that, by the time I graduated I would have enough credits to get a minor in film studies.

 

Since then I have kind of lost an outlet for this kind of discussion.  You can only annoy your friends and family with in depth analysis on a movie that came out twenty years ago before they’ve had enough and tell you to “Please be quiet and just let us enjoy this for what it is”.  I am hoping to use this free inquiry project to help reconnect with writing about film and being critical while exploring some of the big ideas behind film critique and analysis.  Questions like how much authorial intent should factor into an analysis, what exactly makes a good analysis and exploring bad faith criticism and good faith criticism.  I am also very interested in the concept of death of the author and all of the complications surrounding that.

 

That overwhelming feeling that I had initially is continuing to fade as I get a better handle on whats expected of me in this course and in my other courses and I’m finally getting excited about starting this project!

Overwhelming Beginnings – Week 1

California, Washington and Oregon are on fire, BLM protesters forge ahead despite lessening media attention while anti-mask protests steal the spotlight and we still find ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic.  Throughout all of this, there has been a push on social media to be productive, as though its some personal failure if you come out the other side of all this without having learned a new language, written a book and produced your greatest artistic masterpiece.

 

If you have been able to do any or all of those things then I applaud you.  I don’t mean to sound cynical because over all, I’ve got it pretty good.  However, I believe that coming to terms with the fact that it’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed right now is a huge step in being able to overcome it.  In all honesty, these first classes have had me confused and out of my depth more often than not.  I generally consider myself to be an educated person who is relatively tech savvy but  with the sheer number of new programs and apps to learn how to use in addition to new information and course material, I sometimes find myself unable to figure out what questions I should even be asking to get the information I need.

 

Admitting to my classmates that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and discovering that I’m not alone in that has been the first step to breaking things down into manageable tasks.  At the moment I’m still not sure what I want to focus on for my free inquiry project.  I hope that I can find some way to incorporate my love of film and analysis but, at the moment, I’m not really sure I know how to do that, whether it would be possible or if it’s even worthwhile.

 

Jeff Hopkins mentions in his TEDx talk from 2014, that we should be shifting the way that we teach from have student know about something to having them truly know it.  The difference being that something that is known can be recalled and used in everyday life, perhaps several years down the road.  Right at the beginning of the talk he shares a quote, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” and I feel as though that applies to the way that I have been feeling over these last couple weeks.  At this very moment, I feel more like and incredibly full bucket than a sparked fire but as I sit in more classes and participate in more discussions I’m finding that all this new information is becoming more exciting than daunting.

 

Hopefully, as the year progresses, I will continue to settle in and find my groove within this program.  Finishing this first blog post has checked off one more box on an incredibly long to do list and, although there is still a lot to do, I’m happy to say I’m feeling just a little less overwhelmed already.

 

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