Students’ documentaristic glances through the Videomuseums...

30 Videomuseums – recording traces of our subjective cultureAudiovisual Education for young people

Students’

documentaristic

glances through the

Videomuseums

project

Maria Leonida

Synopsis

The aim of this article is to present a project which acquaints students of Gymnasiums and Lyceums (13 to 18 year olds) with team production of short documentaries and to propose it as an educational tool. This project, entitled “Videomuseums: recording traces of our subjective culture” is based on the setting up of filmmaking workshops, with trained teachers and filmmakers. The rationale of the organisers was that cinematographic language and team creation are, if not necessary, at least very important both for youths and for all of us. The remarks found below regard the implementation of the Video-museums project during the years 2009-2012 in Gymnasiums and Lyceums in Eastern Attica, Greece.

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PART A: Videomuseums: the project & the partnership

Image 2: “I like watching films and images but also making a short film. It’s some-thing I’m interested in and want to get involved in”.

Students and cinema, youth and

video

Reporting on the experience from the youth video productions, I would like to primarily focus on how school students justified their interest in participating in groups created at their schools to serve this purpose. Rather, adolescents think they know why they had decided to par-ticipate in a “cinema group”: it is undoubt-edly something different and after all, the cinema has gained wide admiration and popularity worldwide. A film whatsoever seems important and interesting. Cer-tainly, one realises that in such a group the preferences among youngsters are quite varied. In any case, some might want to narrate a story, others to acquire some fame and learn a bit about the use of the camera. A considerable number of them are just curious and a few find it a good excuse to miss classes every so often. The preliminary work with the students shows that they have great curiosity about the taking of photos and the making of a vid-eo. For the sake of example, I am quoting the statements of two students who were involved in the preliminary work during the first meetings in a group of a Voca-tional Lyceum participating in the project.(Images 1, 2).

Image 1: “I’m interested in video shooting and photography. I like the art of edit-ing and everything else related to this subject and many more!”

Students during a video shooting, Pallini, Athens 2012

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Here, without analysing further the visual culture of youths today, we can raise some questions. How many films have today’s adolescents actually seen in a movie theatre? Is it any different to them watching a film on the big or the small screen? Are they really able to narrate the plot of a full-length movie? When they hear the word “film”, what is the first thing that comes to their minds? Could it be a TV series they watched this or last year or a film they may have down-loaded recently or a video clip from Mad or YouTube? Surely, the answers will be various and diverse and will reflect both their family and social surroundings, but point to the fact that there might be some distance between what they imag-ine and what we might have in mind.

Can students make documentaries?

Following their initial willingness to participate in the crea-tion of a film, we reach the point when they become involved in a planned programme designed to utilise the principles of audiovisual education, to incorporate the research and the rationale of a project, to offer space for the students and teachers’ suggestions and to become a tool for expression and communication.

In order to understand this process, it is necessary to see how the creation of a short documentary works. Firstly, because, not that long ago, every cinematographic creation used to be chiefly an adult composition, which is now be-ing passed on to young people, thus creating new facts. Sec-ondly, because in general children and adolescents have a natural inclination to be involved in fictional stories, namely stories about fictional characters and plot. The reason for this is probably the fact that identifying with roles constitutes a basic part of child development. The child gets thus a sense of exploring the world. Besides, the audiovisual stimuli de-rive largely from TV series, cartoons and the like, in which the stories are about certain characters and their adventures.

Let us, therefore, compare the way documentaries are created by adult filmmakers and by groups of students.

Things in common: We are talking about two systems which produce both form (within the context of audiovisu-al language) and content (a topic). These two systems also share the intention to research a topic, explore and publicise it. In both cases, the documentary’s predominant feature is the reality which its creator has chosen to explore. This real-ity, however, inherently tends to progress and change, sur-prising everyone, even the best professional.

Nevertheless, there are fundamental differences. In the case of the filmmaker, their vision is shaped around themselves in a closed enough manner. Assistants and par-ticipants in this may be a producer and a creative team of a shooting crew (Image 3a). In the case of student groups, the approach has to be much more open (Image 3b). The role of the teacher and the media professional is to broaden as much as possible the selection scope of the topics, to offer tools to the children for the development of the research and to nurture the awareness that there are several perspectives before the team enters the realisation stage.1 In addition, concerning the cinematographic workshop, there are pa-

rameters related to each group which impose a certain pace: the number of students, their interests and the particularities of the team (racial, lingual, learning and so on). All these can determine the flow of the discussions and suggestions.

Within this context, however, one should not lose sight of the preliminary work which has to be done with the group of students for it to be creative and productive. This work pertains mainly to the trust, confidence, cooperation and solidarity among its members and can be enhanced with brief exercises – games drawn from different fields such as the theatre and photography.

Brainstorming triggering and coordinating of such a group often resemble a tennis lesson where the adult has to teach beginners of various ages, heights and physical abili-ties. The “balls”, in terms of participation and ideas, return in different heights and various orbits and force. Therefore, the teacher has to activate not just the hands of the adolescents but also their reflexes and their sight. For their ideas to con-tribute to the creativity of the team, we want them to aim at the topic they have decided to process. The “ball throws”

Image 3a

Image 3b


which systematically send the balls out of bounds, most probably shouldn’t be included. In that case, more practice is usually needed or, alternatively, two or three students should hold the same racket and cooperate! For, whether we like it or not, a short film ought to be a “story” with a beginning, middle part and ending – however innovative or pioneering it might be!

Consequently, the skills we wish to develop pertain to finding and exploring the topic of the film as well as un-derstanding the basic codes of cinematographic language. Nonetheless, the teacher ought to be sensitive about the children’s own audiovisual language and to combine the dif-ferent styles suggested.

The documentary as an educational tool and Vide-

omuseums

The experience from the students’ productions along with the question, ‘Can the documentary be an educational tool?’

urge us to define the kind of tool we are talking about and how it can balance its teaching and wider pedagogic use. The Videomuseums project is a way of utilising the docu-mentary as a prompt for deeper reflection regarding school, both as the particular premises and the people interacting in there. It is about a gradual introduction of cinema language in the school class and school practice with the participation of numerous students, but also about training the teachers in processes similar to those of Research Projects, which are so up-to-date again in our country.

Videomuseums, according to the basic idea permeating them, have to do with organising workshops for the produc-tion of short student documentaries dealing with topics from their daily culture and environment. The question we are try-ing to answer with the children is, ‘If we created a Museum for Youth in which you were the curator, what would you like people entering there to see?”. Thus, the group suggests top-ics which express them, which they feel are worth becoming short films with the aim of being displayed in a Future Youth Museum. Their film, with the recommended duration of 4 minutes, could be dealing with any kind of issue which con-cerns them and they would like to impart to young people in other regions and eras. It will then become an exhibit in the virtual “Videomuseum” of the participating schools.

The idea of the project is based on the capability of each one of us to present through our perspective something from our surroundings which we believe is worth preserv-ing for the future. In this way, we promote democratisation of the supervision of an exhibition and even more so, not in a proper museum but in a smaller juvenile one, and with a different display method. A museum which would be in-teresting to visit in 10, 20 or 30 years to help us realise what concerned the young people of a region some time back. Within this context, every group of adolescents is free to pro-pose their own solutions on the chosen topic. The choice of perspective is one of the most important issues they have to tackle: it is not enough to decide that the topic treated will be the lack of communal spaces, for example. Then, pro-moting strategies have to be decided upon, as well as the kind of images and style to be used. It is likely that a young person from Acharnes (a multicultural working class suburb) have other things to say compared to a teenager residing in Psychiko (an upper middle class suburb). On the other hand, there might be other issues, which, regardless of the place, are common, but the manner of handling them differs.

Therefore, Videomuseums encourage students to ob-serve more carefully and subjectively their space, their daily routine and their choices, learning simultaneously how to ex-press themselves with the tools of image and sound.

Teachers’ training

To accomplish the aforementioned goal in collaboration with some teachers who have not specialised in cinematographic issues, a training course is organised during the first half of the school year with the attendance of the collaborating filmmakers participating in the project. The course’s dura-tion is approximately 35 hours. In between the sessions, it is

Images 4, 5: Teachers’ training, Athens 10/2010

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pre-planned that teachers should apply in class some of the exercises learnt during the training. In this way, the teachers have the chance, along with the filmmakers, to try a series of experiential activities combining production, observation and analysis. The use of photography, sound and moving im-age is utilised both as an expressive medium and as a means of communication and information. Our philosophy is based on deconstructing the cinematographic and television lan-guage and recomposing it into short exercises – games tried by the teachers so that they can later apply them in class. These exercises were initially designed in the workshop of audiovisual expression of the Programme “MELINA – Edu-cation and Culture”(1995-2003), they were enriched with new elements and supplemented with new exercises in the course of the educational activity of “Karpos” – Center of Education and Intercultural Communication. Many of these exercises can be found on the blogs of the Digital School,2 as well as on Karpos’s website: www.karposontheweb.org. By means of these exercises we improve the skills of reading im-ages, understanding sound, getting acquainted with editing and composition, script organisation, the notion of visual an-gle and subjectivity. Consequently, the teachers are initiated in the richness of the audiovisual language and can gradually gain an insight in these techniques throughout the year by collaborating with the professional filmmakers. Thus, train-

ing is based on hands-on experience and extended practice and then on team processing (Images 4, 5, 6).

Image 6: Students evaluating and editing their material, Athens 10/2011

Collaboration with professional filmmakers

A focal point on designing the Project is the collaboration of schools with young filmmakers who have also attended the training course in order to become familiar with the kind of activities we propose and also to meet in person the partici-pating teachers. Each one of them undertakes the guidance of a teacher and their group of students. As a result, during all the stages of script processing, shooting, editing and so on, it is pre-planned that a young filmmaker should collabo-rate with each team of students and their teacher for a total of 50 hours a year.

The manner, the degree of participation as well as in-tervention of the outside collaborator constitutes an ex-ceptionally interesting issue pertaining to a wide range of programmes where the arts are incorporated in school or youth groups. It can be the main topic of another article, but generally it has to do with a quite fragile balance between the transmission of information/stimuli and the proposition of style, structure and “solutions” on the part of the adult pro-fessional. Furthermore, it poses questions and suggestions


about the balance between the outside collaborator and the teacher, as well as how components of the curriculum can be tested interdisciplinarily.

The team co-decides

What is the procedure in class? By means of discussions, the team tries to determine the topic which mostly moves and expresses the majority. The research done on the various suggestions by the separate groups widens the discussion and reduces the initially numerous potential topics. If need be, the class is asked to vote. This stage of discussion and ex-ploration of the topic aims at stirring up the team to become more concerned and promote dialogue and negotiation. In other words, what the documentarist does personally and in-ternally, the group handles collectively. Moreover, the topic might need to be researched in other places and with other people, outside the school, which exposes the children to real research conditions where they face a question-answer interaction with unknown people. Contemplating about, ‘who to ask, where to seek information, what we and what others believe’, seeks to expand the students’ horizons and familiarise them with research methods. Simultaneously, students are integrated in team and collaborative processes, take up roles and responsibilities which they have to carry out.

Subsequently, their cooperation with the young film-makers trained for the particular project is coordinated: guidelines and suggestions are offered on the ways to or-ganise ideas. In this stage, cinema professionals get involved in the shaping of the script as the group’s assistants, while at the same time they supervise various activities on audio-visual language with practical exercises using digital photo and video cameras, and they also project examples from previous years. Concerning the role of the outside collabora-tors, it is stressed that their contribution is decisive in cases when the teacher doesn’t have some relevant experience. In fact, after 3 years of experience from the implementation of the project, I can maintain that only those teachers who had had over two years of practice on film creation could func-tion more or less independently. Understandably, like every adult, filmmakers and teachers in charge convey to the stu-dents’ team their own standpoint both during learning pro-cedures and when dealing with style and the communicative manner of the documentary.

will bring about changes in their work, as happens with any documentary or film.

Furthermore, the schools which participated in the pro-ject from 2010 to 2012, having Videomuseums as their point of departure ascribed some cultural and environmental con-notations. Their trivial local reality has offered the raw materi-al which was utilised in the wider documentary frame. Let us not forget that documentary today perpetuates the legacy of cinema and television, transfused with the aspects of fiction, reportage and video clips, thus allowing all sorts of applica-tions. It offers a form exceptionally open to encompass dif-ferent points of view, which is an imperative when working with youngsters in diverse socioeconomic environments. It turned out that students were quite flexible in the recording and interpretation of the topics.

Despite their predisposition to imagine fictional stories, as mentioned above, that is stories with characters and a pre-arranged plot, by introducing the documentary aspect we believe that we have enriched the final outcome and sensi-tised the students to become more socially and environmen-tally conscious.

Let us see which topics were predominant by citing some film titles from 2010-11, accessible on the following websites: www.Videomuseums.eu, http://dide-anatol.att.sch.gr, www.karposontheweb.gr

Places to hang out and/or divert oneself in the daily routine; their lack and inadequacy (Paradise City, Stories of Our Square, Think Colours, Where are We going Now?)

Free expression and space (graffiti/sketches, music) (Non-art Teens, Our Base)

Friendship and how it is affected by technology (Com-puter Vs Environment ) or Friendship and diversity/style (The Way I am)

Unsolved environmental issues (Contrasts)

Those “video-exhibits” represent student groups from an extended, peculiar region, Eastern Attica Greece, which combines the urban landscape of the periphery with work-ing-middle class areas (Menidi), newly-built neighbourhoods of developing Athens in 2000 (Glyka Nera, Pikermi), but also communities with mixed seasonal agricultural-touristy identity (Marathonas, Nea Makri, Keratea, Lavrio). Watching the films, especially if one compares them, offers a vivid im-age of Greek students today. When the films were screened to teachers and students, they gave rise to discussions and comparisons. It is obvious that other students, as audience, recognise the youth outlook and are easily involved in a con-versation about themselves after watching a film of some peers of theirs.

Surely, these topics don’t surprise us, perhaps because we also live in contemporary Greece. They startled, how-ever, our counterparts in Germany (teachers and students), when, during 2010-12, Videomuseums were implemented in Frankfurt through the Comenius Regio programme. The as-sertiveness as well as the social attitude of the majority of the groups, either when they talked about their involvement with computers, their clothes, or the landfills, made an im-pression on our counterparts. Therefore, what we had taken

Script development

The discussions on the topics bring forth the notions of place, as to ‘which topic concerns us in this neighbour-hood or city?’ and of time, as to ‘what is going on currently which matters to us?’ and consequently lead to the choice of perspective, as to ‘which point of view are we going to ex-amine the topic from? According to whose standpoint?’ The team chooses its topic and the angle its members feel closer to. Inevitably, the latter – to the team’s unawareness – ma-tures along with the team in the course of the year, which

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for granted (e.g. the fact that youth in Greece were con-cerned about such issues) proved to be “different” through the eyes of some “others”. This is a known procedure in the field of documentary which found its analogy in the stu-dents’ productions as well. In conclusion, our viewpoint can sometimes widen not only our own scope, but also that of our spectators.

over, they attended the project under the guidance of teach-ers of various subjects (e.g. Language, Informatics, German and Physical Education teachers), therefore, they produced the films by means of various activities within the wider con-text of school life.

The creation of a film, however short it may be, requires group work, collaboration and coordination. The topics treated in the Videomuseums project usually necessitate re-search, postulating questions and processing the answers, information management and negotiating among group members. The student groups were involved in fruitful dis-cussions even when they couldn’t really see how they would end up. Additionally, they obtained practical experience with several means of expression used in documentaries and the cinema and dominating the television and the Internet:

Interviews

Listing of research findings by a presenter

Students’ training, documentary workshop, Athens 10/2011

Objectives – Results

The Project’s objectives were multiple and the first assess-ment indicates that they have been achieved to a great ex-tent.3 I believe that our students have gained insight into their topics in an effective and moving way and managed to present a collective viewpoint, crucial in most cases.

It also turned out that children had been involved in various roles – both behind and in front of the camera. More-


Anecdotal interviews in the form of discussion

Personal poetic voice-over – narration

Attendance of activities – Observational Documentary

Short dialogue writing

The exercises with cameras and video cameras is another way for students to get to know one another better, but also to familiarise them with the notions the image carries apart from the random shots they take with their mobile. When de-veloping their skills in digital media, students become aware of the subjectivity innate in each and every choice of image and sound, a fact which becomes more explicit at the editing stage (composition). A film’s construction requires rigorous structure and multiple choices which resemble the structural needs of written and oral speech, which are of primary sig-nificance as goals of school education. We should also bear in mind that all these skills are combined with entertainment and, according to teachers, always involve students with quite diverse performance in other school subjects.

Lastly, children come to terms with the fact (reluctantly so, though) that as creators we impart only a distilled part of our experience and we cannot say everything in a film. To me, this procedure is the onset of maturity which can guide young people in the future.

Notes

1. A detailed description of the relevant procedure in the article: Theodoridis, M. (2012). Youth Videomuseums of a community: The background of a project. In N. Govas (Ed.), Videomuseums – recording traces of our subjective culture. Audiovisual Education for young people. Athens: Directorate of Secondary Education of Eastern Attica.

2. Theodoridis, M., & Leonida, M. (2011), Programme of Studies on Audiovisual Expression in obligatory education, Ministry of Educa-tion, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs, a pilot blog on Digital School, New Pilot Programmes of Studies, PS on Civilisation and Aesthetic Education. Scientific Field: Civilisation – Artistic Activities – Proposal B/ Audiovisual expression. http://digitalschool.minedu.gov.gr/info/newps.php.

3. See detailed results at Kritikou, L., Theodoridis, M., & Dimaki, I. (2012). Evaluation elements of the Videomuseums project in Eastern Attica, Greece. In N. Govas (Ed.), Videomuseums – recording traces of our subjec-tive culture. Audiovisual Education for young people. Athens: Directorate of Secondary Education of Eastern Attica.

Translated from Greek

by Marina Toulgaridou

Maria Leonida is a film director with a focus on documentary. She trained in filmmaking in Lon-don and Denmark. She holds a BA in History and an MA in Art History. She is currently a PhD can-didate at the University of Athens. Her work has been screened in Film Festivals and TV channels around Europe. She is particularly interested in the anthropological approach and has filmed vari-ous subjects on art and society. She has also been directing video material for theatre productions and multimedia projects. She has been working as a Media Teacher for various programmes in and outside schools, teaching film language and audi-ovisual expression to children, young people and adult teachers. She has designed and implement-ed workshops for European projects: North Ae-gean Narratives 2011-12, Videomuseums (2010-12), Stranger Festival 2009, Ecowomen 2008, CH.I.C.A.M 2002-3. In 2011, she collaborated with the University of Frankfurt and the JOBAct project in Germany for media language workshops. She is the co-founder of Karpos – Centre for Education and Intercultural Communication, an NGO, which develops projects on media literacy, dealing with ways of understanding the media as well as with processes of interdisciplinary learning.

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