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2010 27: 494Written Communicationystein Gilje

Practice

Filmmakers' Deployment of Semiotic Tools in Their FilmmakingMultimodal Redesign in Filmmaking Practices: An Inquiry of Young

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1Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo,Norway

Multimodal Redesign

in Filmmaking

Practices: An Inquiry

of Young Filmmakers

Deployment of

Semiotic Tools in Their

Filmmaking Practice

ystein Gilje1

Abstract

This article traces the trajectory of one particular scene in the work of threemedia students writing and filmmaking. The analysis scrutinizes the role ofsemiotic tools, such as synopsis and storyboard, in students filmmaking practice.Moreover, the use of interactional data combined with textual data allows fora rich recording of the activity, aiming to integrate a multimodal analysisinto a sociocultural perspective on learners composing practices. The findingsindicate that the students are not able to transfer their particular meaning fromthe written mode into the language of moving images because they downplaythe role of the semiotic tools available to them in the educational context.

Keywords

media education, mediated action, multimodality, transformation andtransduction, interactional analysis, sociocultural writing studies

New media and editing tools have led to a range of new digital means for

shaping stories and narratives with different modes and across a wide range of(new) genres. Texts are ever more multimodal, and the tools for composingsuch texts have become available with digital technology in a wide range of

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Gilje 495

contexts and domains. The growing prominence of these digital tools indiverse contexts like schools and after-school programs, or in the domestic

sphere, has increasingly led researchers, also in writing studies, to emphasizethe importance of research on these new composing processes across a widerange of modes, media, styles, and genres (Burgess, Green, Jenkins & Hartley,2009, p. 121; Burn, 2009; Carrington & Robinson, 2009; Haas, 2008; Ranker,2008, 2009). Studies on young peoples composing practices have increas-ingly paid attention to the multimodal dimension of editing when young peo-

ple work with digital authoring technology. This is due to the affordances ofnew digital media and editing software, which includes collaborative editingof multimodal texts and enable content production and distribution in bothwriting and multimedia on a scale previously unimaginable (Jewitt, 2008;Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010).

This article presents how young filmmakers work with one particularscene in a short fiction film over time. This approach offers a method ofunderstanding how students work with one specific meaning through differ-ent modes, a process that is closely related to the nature of filmmaking. In thisvein, the article illustrates how a specific meaning is transformed and trans-duced within and across modes. Such perspective may afford more knowl-

edge about young peoples practices of composing and writing in a multimodalworld (Kress & Bezemer, 2009).

With this object of analysis as my point of departure, two growing bodiesof research seem to be of particular interest. First, advocators of media liter-acy primarily seek to understand how young people work with digital author-ing tools and how these tools have the potential to transform young peoplescomposing practices (Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 1994; Burn, 2009; Gilje,in press; Goodman, 2003; Marsh, 2006; Pahl, 2008). A core interest here is

the role of editing software and authoring technology and how young peopledeploy semiotic resources in their composing practices. Examining the visualmodes, Gilje illustrates how the editing software becomes a tool for think-ing when composing a transition from one scene to another by using filtersand special effects. In this sense, filters and special effects, as they are broughtinto play, become a sort of mediator between different levels of understand-ing of the filmmaking task at hand (Gilje, in press).

On the other hand, researchers associated with a sociocultural tradition of

writing studies seem to increasingly give attention to the influence fromauthoring technology in the process of writing (Prior & Hengst, 2010). Forinstance, Ranker demonstrates how the multimodal spatiality of the videoediting program influenced the students composing by making new types ofsemiotic resources available (Ranker, 2008). More specifically, he analyzed



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the different visual and textual representations that two male studentsdeployed while composing a digital video. Such studies are closely related

researchers who pay attention to issues of literacy and identity in their multi-modal analysis of young peoples composing practices. For instance, a grow-ing number of researchers aim at working with digital storytelling asmultimodal composing practices (Hull, 2003; Hull & Nelson, 2005; Nelson,Hull, & Roche-Smith, 2008). These studies elucidate how young people havean agentive stance toward their present identities, circumstances, and futures.For example, Hull and Nelson describe the expressive power of multimodal-ity, paying particular attention to the combining of modes and the kind ofrepresentational synergy that is created when this happens (Hull & Nelson,2005). They argue that each mode (such as images, written text, and music),respectively, imparts certain kinds of meanings more easily and naturallythan others (Hull & Nelson, 2005, p. 229). Moreover, the relationship

between identity formation and social theory of learning is further exploredby Hull, Zacher, and Jury (2007), who draws on the work by Holland,Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998) and other works specific to sociocul-tural perspectives (Bakhtin, 1981; Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). Consequently,these studies connect the concepts of semiotic mediation and cultural arti-

facts with identity formation and agency. Although these two bodies ofresearch give primacy to different aspects of the practice of composition,they share a sociocultural understanding of writing as a multimodal andsocially constituted practice.

Building on this work, I investigated how three students work with a spe-cific meaning in a key scene in a short fiction movie over time. In this article,I thus present a case study of how three media students worked with (a) writ-ing a manuscript and synopsis, (b) drawing a storyboard, and (c) showing

their movie in a pre-screening to peer students in an urban upper secondaryschool. The study combines interactional data with analysis of text, lookingupon the trajectory of this key scene from two different perspectives, a mul-timodal and a sociocultural perspective on writing and composing practicesin educational contexts. The article includes discussion of methodologies forunderstanding writing practices and, more specifically, practices of compos-ing multimodal texts as part of filmmaking practices. According to Prior andHengst, the exploration of the relationship between multimodality and ques-

tions of situated learning is still an issue that is not well elaborated (Prior &Hengst, 2010). They advocate a critical stance to the multimodal approachalone, finding that it prioritizes composition over practices. Consequently, amultimodal perspective aims at analyzing how the process of semiosis is

brought to a standstill in textual form; the students acting and sense making



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are arrested for a moment (Kress, 2010) and inscribed in a (multimodal)text. In other words, the unit of analysis is primarily the text itself, although

scholars of social semiotics admit that such analytical work should be com-bined with other analytical principles (Ivarsson, Linderoth, & Slj, 2009;Jewitt, 2006; Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress et al., 2005). In order to overcomesuch distinctions, Prior and Hengst call for a close analysis of discourse prac-tices on a sociogenetic level as well as of situated discourses in the microgen-eses, in order to understand how activity is remediated. According to Priorand Hengst, semiotic remediation calls on us to attend to the diverse waysthat semiotic performances are represented and reused across modes, media,and chains of activity. Such an approach shares assumptions with Iedemasconcept of resemiotization, which emphasizes (re)materializations of talk,text, and drawing into a single historical trajectory (Iedema, 2003). In bothcases, these scholars stress that it is critical to locate practices of writing andcomposing in situ over time in longer chains of distributed activity. The study

presented here aims to do so by examining and combining two analyticallenses on how three students work with one specific meaning in a particularscene in a short fiction movie. The analyses follow the trajectory of this scenewithin and across different modes in the students filmmaking across time

(Lemke, 2000). In other words, the analyses put an emphasis on the ways inwhich three 17-year-old student filmmakers transform and transduce a par-ticular scene in written and visual modes.

The article is structured in three sections. First, it discusses a socioculturaland multimodal perspective on students filmmaking practices. The aim hereis to discuss and propose an analytical approach in order to understand stu-dents acting and sense making in their composing practices. Second, themethod is presented in depth by giving a detailed description of how the

fieldwork was carried out. Herein the methods and methodological approachcontrast with other approaches to multimodal composing, as briefly reviewedearlier. In the end, a final analysis of two excerpts of textual data as well asthree excerpts of interactional data is conducted and discussed. The articlefinishes with a concluding remark on the importance of such analysis infuture studies within the sociocultural tradition of writing studies.

Theoretical Framework

and Research QuestionsIn order to fully understand the multimodal dimension of this composing

process, I draw on two concepts that derive from social semiotics (Hodge &Kress, 1988; Jewitt, 2006; Kress, 1997, 2003), an approach that offers



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analytical tools to conceptualize and distinguish between different modes ofcommunication. Social semiotics and multimodality advocate that we con-

struct the world through all the semiotic resources we have at hand in a givensituation and in all material utterances we make (Hodge & Kress, 1988).Central to this approach is, therefore, an interest in understanding how peo-

ple communicate and make meaning with a wide range of semiotic resourcesor modes (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Van Leeuwen, 2005). In that sensecommunication can be described as multimodal. In order to understand howstudents work within and across modes in their composing practices, theconcepts of transduction and transformation have been proposed as analyti-cal concepts (Bezemer & Kress, 2008). Transduction can be exemplifiedwith an illustrator or designer who might have been asked to draw across(transduct) the written description into the mode of image (Bezemer &Kress, 2008, p. 176). Transformation is related to changes within a particularmode. By studying a trajectory of how one particular scene evolves acrosstime, issues of transformation and transduction are illuminated. From a mul-timodal perspective, the students do semiotic work within and across modeswhen working with the specific meaning in their film. This approach allowsfor understanding the composition of such multimodal texts as redesign,

which covers the complementary process of transduction and transformation(Bezemer & Kress, 2008).

Furthermore, my object of study is framed by a social understanding ofliteracy, paying particular attention to how resources are brought into play inthe process of redesign, a point I will return to later when discussing themethodology. A sociocultural theory of writing argues that activity is situatedin concrete interactions that are simultaneously improvised locally and medi-ated by cultural tools and practices. Moreover, such a perspective advocates

writing as a dialogic process of invention (Dysthe, 1996; Rommetveit, 1974).The sociocultural understanding of composing practices builds on the prem-ise that meaning making is always mediated. Seeing writing as distributedand mediated means recognizing that all writing is collaborative and a modeof social action, involving divisions of labor and forms of coauthorship.

More specifically, the present study takes Jim Wertschs assertion thatmediational means and cultural tools shape a particular practice in essentialways. This perspective emphasizes the importance of cultural mediation

(Wertsch, 1991, 1998). According to Wertsch, human beings master andappropriate cultural tools and mediational means, such as semiotic resourcesand material artifacts that are provided by a particular setting (Wertsch, 2002,

p. 11). Mastery here typically involves knowing how to use a cultural tool,while appropriation refers to the process of making semiotic resource ones



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Gilje 499

own (Wertsch, 1998, 2002). Taking this perspective, it might be argued thatfilm synopsis and storyboard are semiotic tools provided by the institutional

context that the students work within, in this case media education in uppersecondary school. Consequently, it is impossible to discuss the agent in termsof an individual; rather, mediated action will always involve an irreducibletension between agents and their semiotic tools in practices of composing andwriting (Wertsch, 2002, p. 13).

By presenting interactional data of how students work collaboratively, thestudy aims at elucidating how a growing tension arises in relation to thechoices the learners make in their composing practice over time. In the analy-sis, I follow a trajectory by scrutinizing three events (excerpts of interactionaldata) where the students work with a specific meaning in a key scene in theirshort fiction film. The analysis aims at combining the two levels as describedearlier. The sociocultural approach illuminates the role of the manuscript andthe storyboard as semiotic tools in their composing practice of the specificscene. The analysis here illuminates how students deploy these semiotic toolsat particular moments in the process when something is at stake for them.With such a point of departure, I ask,

How do students negotiate and deploy (semiotic) resources whenwriting synopsis, drawing storyboard, and showing their film to

peer students?

The second layer in the analysis enables a multimodal lens to look athow one specific scene in the film is redesigned within and across modes.Here, the process is understood in terms of transformation and transduction,the complementary process of redesign. This multimodal approach explores

how the key scene in a variety of different modes is redesigned as a trajectoryof filmmaking. Short written stories and short fiction films draw upon differ-ent semiotic resources for making meaning. Each mode has its affordancesand constraints. I, therefore, find it important to ask how the key scene in thefilm is redesigned in the students filmmaking:

How do learners discuss and make meaning when redesigning oneparticular scene in the making of a short fiction film?

The combination of these two approaches informs the analysis of the tra-jectory of one specific meaning throughout the composing process of thisparticular scene in the short fiction movie. By elaborating upon such anapproach, the trajectory of one particular scene in the short fiction film can beilluminated and discussed.

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Method

ResearchSite,Participants,and

DescriptionsoftheFilmProjectThe present case study was conducted in a media education class at an urbanupper secondary school (named Greenwood) in Oslo, Norway.1 The projectwas initiated and carried out by the teachers as part of the curriculum andwas offered to the students as one of three compulsory projects. In total,31 students (all in the second year of the media program) participated in thefilm project, resulting in 8 different short fiction films. I carried out field-work at Greenwood over a period of 7 weeks, by visiting the class in everylesson where the students worked on the film project. I consider my researchrole as a participant observer, as I watched them recording their discussionsand composed practices with my handheld camcorder. The data I gatheredfrom Greenwood consists of videotaped observations (13 hours), reflectionnotes by students, and a copy of all the final short fiction films (see Table 1).The student filmmaking groups were observed and videotaped during the

preproduction phase and during film editing.My case, or unit of study, was Ida, Sarah, and Lisbeths composing prac-

tices when making the short fiction film Threesome. By following in particu-lar this group of novices in filmmaking, I became aware of how they, whenmaking decisions with regard to their composing, maintained a steady streamof speech. In particular the video data from this group, compared to the othergroups, seemed rich with discussion of important choices in regard to theirfilm. This joint style of working in the preproduction phase as well as whenediting the film made it possible for me as a researcher to follow the trajec-tory of how the students discussed the specific meaning of one particular

scene in the movie. Nevertheless, my observations and data from the work inthe other groups, as well as papers handed out by the teachers and the stu-dents reflection notes, have informed and served as a background to theanalysis that follows. All of the video observations from this group of threestudents were subsequently reviewed, and more than 30 excerpts of studentsinteraction were chosen for close and further analysis.

DescriptionoftheFictionFilmThreesome

The short fiction film I chose to focus on, in which the students work witha specific scene, is entitled Threesome. It is based upon a 575-word-longassignment in mother-tongue education written by Ida, 2 years previous tothe filmmaking project (see Appendix 1). The plot of the film is in onesense a classical one, but with a surprising key scene at the end. It goes as



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Gilje 501

follows: The girl in the movie prepares in the first part to meet the boy shehas fallen in love with. When they meet, he tells her his secret: He is gay,and he is in love with her brother. The story is told throughout six scenes.In the first scene, we see the girl meet the boy in the schoolyard. In the nextscene, the girl is sitting in the kitchen at home, telling her brother that sheis thrilled because she has made a date with the boy for that evening. In the

third scene, she prepares in the bathroom. In the fourth scene, she waits forthe boy on the bench where they are supposed to meet. When he finallyarrives in the key scene, which is the focus for our study, the picture sud-denly goes into black [blackout] before the boy reveals his secret. In thesixth and final scene, we see the girl in her bedroom, thinking about the

Table 1. Core Data Sources and Their Use in the Study

Data source Use in the study Means of analysis

Photocopies of theshort written story,film synopsis, script,and storyboard.Copy of the finalversion of the film.

Used for multimodal analysisof how Scene 5 wasredesigned throughout theprocess.

Multimodal analysis of howthe students transformedand transduced the textsin the preproductionprocess.

Video recordings ofthe collaborative

work when writing,drawing storyboard,recording, andediting the video.

Allowed detailedunderstanding of how the

students negotiated the keyscene within and acrossmodes in their filmmaking.

Interactional analysis ofhow the students brought

semiotic resources intoplay in their composingpractice.

Video recordingsof the studentsshowing the film topeer students.

Allowed detailedunderstanding of how anaudience understood thekey scene, suggesting also abetter solution to the scene.

Interactional analysis of howthe students interpretedthe specific scene in themovie.

Reflection notesincluding theteachers commentsand marks at theend of the project.Documents handedout by the teacherin relation to theproject.

The reflection notes gaveadditional insight into howthe students think of thekey scene and the film ingeneral. Teachers comments(and marks) gave insightsinto how the work wasvalued in the educationalsetting; media education.

These data gave me as aresearcher a backgroundto understand theassignment and thestudents understandingof it. Considered assecondary data.



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experience, before she picks up a picture of herself, her brother, and theboy. She draws a heart around the two boys and then destroys this part of

the picture, keeping only the part that displays her alone in the frame. Theshort fiction movie is based upon this written piece, which does not have aparticular narrative built into it. The fifth scene is to be followed in theanalysis. This is the key scene in the movie, in which the boy is about toshare his secret.

AnalyticalPrinciplesandUnitofAnalysis

As noted earlier, the work presented here assumes Wertschs extension(1991) of Vygotsky (1986), which postulates that the appropriate analysis forstudying human activity is to study goal-directed, tool-mediated action in asocial context (Smagorinsky, 2008). This approach informs my first researchquestion, which concerns the role of the manuscript and storyboard as semi-otic tools that are deployed into the students discussions. These resourcesmediate the students thinking in the practice of composition. Such a socio-cultural analysis accounts for interactional data of students interactions.Thus, the video recordings of students interaction in the study are the pri-

mary data. To analyze these interactions, I use the broad category mediatedaction as my unit of analysis (Wertsch, 1998, 2002). This unit of analysisfocuses on the irreducible tension between the learners and the cultural toolsand mediational means, brought and worked on by the students as part oftheir ongoing practice engaging in this scene in the movie. The analytic focushere is on how the students negotiate with language and gestures when mak-ing decisions in regard to the specific meaning of the scene. This meaning isnegotiated within and across modes in a trajectory. Therefore, the second

step in my analytical work relates to how I applied a multimodal analysis tounderstand the orchestration of different modes when the students engagedin writing the manuscript and drawing the storyboard. By choosing one par-ticular scene at the unit of my study, I was able to focus on a particular setof interactional data obtained from many hours of video data. By triangulat-ing my data sources, I could trace the trajectory of the particular meaning thestudents applied to this specific scene and explore how this key scene wasredesigned in the diverse semiotic tools deployed by the students in their

filmmaking practice. It is, of course, important to discuss whether a sceneacross modes in such a trajectory is stable enough as a unit of analysisacross the different phases in the students composing practices. On the otherhand, taking the students perspective, this scene became very important forthem, taking into consideration the great amount of time they invested



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Gilje 503

working with this scene. Consequently, by establishing a trajectory of thisparticular scene, I could follow how one specific meaning was transformed

and transduced across the whole process of the students filmmaking. At thesame time, the focus on one specific scene made it possible to choose someof the more than 30 excerpts of video data for further analysis.

The analysis of the chosen excerpts takes as its premise the account ofinteractional analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995). Interactional analysis(IA) suggests a method that is action oriented, focuses on the interactionaldata in a particular way, and has roots in ethnography, sociolinguistics, con-versational analysis, and sociocultural theories. Two aspects of IA are impor-tant in regard to the analysis conducted here. First, IA emphasizes how the

participants in the interaction engage with objects and artifacts. Second, IAallows researchers to do microlevel analysis by using ethnographic data(Geertz, 1973). A decisive premise in IA is that knowledge and action must

be grounded in empirical evidence, that is, verifiable observations of moment-to-moment verbal and nonverbal activity in social settings. By making ananalytical account on the microlevel of the students interaction, it is possibleto understand how the composing processes are situated in institutional prac-tices (Linell, 1998, 2009). I find such a line of thought to be in line with

Smagorinskys sociocultural approach to writing practices, which put anemphasis on the tools that mediate the thinking and the goals toward which

people put them to use (Smagorinsky, 2008).I observed in my video data that much of the students writing, drawing,

and editing was quite straightforward. It follows that only when problemsoccur do their composing practices lose their transparency and breakdownsin the practice become visible in discussions and social interactions. These

particular moments provided interesting events, which I wanted to explore

further for analytical purposes. By choosing one particular scene in theirshort fiction film as the unit of my study, I was able to focus on a particularset of interactional data obtained from many hours of video data. The threeexcerpts are chosen because they signify the exact moment in the semiosis inwhich the students make decisive choices about apt semiotic resources tocommunicate the key scene in their short fiction film. A number of theseevents were then scrutinized collaboratively in a community of researchers inorder to increase the reliability. In this regard, I followed a method suggested

in IA, namely, sharing video data with fellow researchers. Thus, I exploredthe corpus of data in multiple replays of the material. In these sessions, mycolleagues could interpret the data without being informed of my preliminaryanalyses of how I interpreted what was happening in the events. In otherwords, other researchers could bring up issues and emerging topics different



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from those I had already thought of. As suggested by Smagorinsky, thisapproach to the data does not preclude someone else from approaching thedata in a different way, but rather eliminates the ways in which my perspec-

tive contributes to my construction of the situation (Smagorinsky, 2008).With this as my foundation for choosing transcripts for closer investigation,I looked for instances in which the learners made a great effort to solve achallenging task in their filmmaking. Moreover, by using IA, I looked for thedialogic and interactional aspects of the students writing and composing

practices by carefully paying attention to how they deployed resources whenmaking the key scene in the short fiction movie. Finally I integrated interac-tional and textual data into my analytical approach of the trajectory. This was

made possible because I reduced the data by putting emphasis on the practiceof composing one particular scene in the short fiction movie.

Model1:TwoPerspectivesonFilmmakingPractices

As pointed previously, two different approaches inform the analysis, andthese two approaches are illustrated below in the flowchart.

Research Question 1:

Learners deploying semiotic tools in interaction.Research Question 2: Redesigning Scene 5 Within and Across Modes

These two perspectives enable me to look upon the process of workingwith one particular scene, but with two different lenses (or layers). While a

Figure 1. Interactions between the semiotic tools deployed



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Gilje 505

sociocultural perspective emphasizes how resources are brought into play andhow the learners value these semiotic tools in the practice, the multimodal

perspective gives an analytical account to understand how the particularmeaning of the scene is redesigned within and across modes.

Findings

In this section, I present my findings in three subsections. Each subsection iscentered on the production and discussion of a text and illuminates how the keyscene is mediated in students interaction and discussions before finally inscribedin the film synopsis or the storyboard. The analysis of texts and interaction allowsfor an exploration of the trajectory of this scene across their filmmaking.Mediated action as a unit of analysis illuminates how resources are brought intothe practice of talking about and negotiating these semiotic tools for filmmaking.The multimodal lens illuminates how the students particular meaning is trans-formed from the written story into the script in Subsection 1 and transduced fromthe written script to the drawing of the storyboard in Subsection 2. Finally, Idiscuss how this key scene is interpreted by others by looking at a particular eventwhere the nearly finished film is screened for peer students in Subsection 3.

Subsection1:TransformingScene5intheWrittenMode

A central issue for all the students in the first week of the project concernedwhat kind of film they should make. In plenary sessions, the students viewedfilms that had previously won prizes at the Amandus Film Festival.2 Severaldiscussions occurred among the students after these sessions, resulting in a

joint understanding of what sort of films had a chance to be nominated for

one of the awards at the Amandus Film Festival.Excerpt 1a is a transcript of an event where the three students do collab-orative work in front of the computer. The students aim at finalizing the half-

page-long film synopsis, before starting to write the script and project plan.They use the written short story by Ida and a set of questions handed out bythe teacher in the assignment as a guiding resource in their writing.

Excerpt1aWritingtheFilmSynopsis

1. Sarah: We have to write how the film should end, but we havenot agreed on that . . .

2. Lisbeth: No, but we may write that it. . . that it ends with . . . [Idabegins to type at the keyboard].



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3. Sarah: The audiences understand in a symbolic way.4. Ida: Yes. Ends, yes . . .5. Sarah: That he is gay.6. Ida:[The movie] ends with the fact that the audience . . . via

symbols . . . no, wait, [types again] via a symbolic representa-tion, wait, via a symbolic . . . not representationthat is notcorrect . . . ehh.

7. Lisbeth: Viasymbols [Ida types while Lisbeth is talking].8. Ida: Via symbols . . . Jesus! [types the wrong key on the key-

board] . . . symbols . . . in the movie, do the audiences understandthat. . . .

9. Sarah: . . . The boy is gay.

10. Lisbeth:No, homosexual.11. Ida: That the boy is homosexual. Hehe [Ida and Lisbeth laugh]. Itsounds so silly . . .

12. Ida: But, is it okay? . . . It is only the synopsis.

The excerpt opens with Sarah articulating the question in the handoutfrom the teacher. Her focus is on the task of finishing the film synopsis, and

she is indicating that they have to agree upon the plot point in the story. InLines 2 to 9, the students collaboratively formulate their plot in a sentence,which Ida types (with some difficulty) on the keyboard. In this sentence, theyattach the idea of using symbols to the plot in the movie. In the last part of theexcerpt, another issue is brought into play. In Lines 10 to 12, Lisbeth and Ida

Figure 2. (a) Reading questions from the teacher, and (b) Discussing their ownwritten text



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Gilje 507

repeat the last part of the sentence. When laughing, Ida says, It sounds sosilly, indicating that she is not satisfied with the solution. But after a short

break, she states, Its only the synopsis.There are two interesting aspects of Idas statement in the final two lines.The first concerns the plot point in the synopsis, which is explicitly articu-lated in Line 11. While this issue of being gay is never explicit in the writ-ten story (see Excerpt 1b), the task of writing the film synopsis teases out anelucidation of what is implicitly told in the written story (see Excerpt 1b).What may be one way of interpreting the short story is made explicit whenfacing the task of making the synopsis in the filmmaking process. Completingthe film synopsis persuades the students to explicitly write down the main

point of the story as part of the assignment.The second aspect of Idas statement concerns the value of making a film

synopsis. The expression (in Line 12), It is only the synopsis, indicates thatthe plot can be altered later on in the preproduction phase. Idas statementindicates a tension between how the plot is actually carried out in the text ofthe film synopsis and how she would like to express it. The interactional datadesignate that the students are not able to create a statement any better than theline written.

One way to further elaborate on this latter issue is to look at the texts thatare produced previous and subsequent to the film synopsis. In this sense, thescript is a resource for understanding how the dialogue should be carried out

by the actors on location while shooting and it takes the plot point (in Scene 5)written in the film synopsis one step further. The following excerpt (seeTable 2) demonstrates how the short written story is transformed into the keyscene (Scene 5) in the script. The two pieces look like this:

Excerpt1b:ExcerptofOriginalShortWrittenStorybyIdaandScript(SeeAppendix1)

In writing the film synopsis, Ida blurts out that it sounds silly saying the boyis gay. As shown in the short written story, this fact is never told explicitly.What is not told explicitly in the written piece must be transformed into anew kind of text, a semiotic tool apt for the shooting of the film. What thestudents accomplish is to transform the sentence Afterwards it became very

silent with a semiotic resource (in this case word) in the film script. Theyintend to do this with an utterance by the boy, but in their script they write justa somewhat nonsensical word. The word bsolskfjdkkiff may indicate that



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the boy should utter something when shooting Scene 5, but this utteranceshould be impossible to understand for an audience. The secret, which iswritten between the lines and is open to interpretation and imagination ofthe reader of the short story, is not made explicit in the script either. The

process of transformation is in one way visible in the texts, but the semioticresources used in the script are not doing any semiotic work for the students

in regard to their preparation for shooting in the production phase. In thissense, how the plot point in the short fiction film should be told is still anunsolved issue when the students move on to the next step in preproduction:storyboarding.

Subsection2:StoryboardingTransduction:

FromWrittentoVisualMode

Storyboard design is a preparation for film production and highlights howthe story should be told visually; it is a key task in preproduction and hasalways been used as a basic tool in cinematography. Storyboarding replicates

Table 2. Excerpt of the Short Written Story

The last section in the short story written

by Ida. (translated from Norwegian)

ScriptThreesome, Scene 5 (translated

from Norwegian)

He gathered up his courage and turnedtowards her. What I tell you must bea secret, OK?, he asked. She nodded.You will be the first who knows, hecontinued. It is easier to tell it to youbecause . . . because you are a girl.

[Hug each other]Girl: Yeah, ehand then it was something

important you wanted to tell me.Boy: Yes . . . recently I have noticed how

you give me some signals, and. . . .Girl: Yes, yes?

She became more and more sure that

he would not declare his love for her.She became unsure if she wanted tohear what should be spoken. Thesilence became embarrassing. Maybe heexpected her to say something. Whatdo you want to tell me, then? sheasked. He sighed deeply and then heblurted it out. Afterwards it becamevery silent.

Boy: I know that this is a bit silly, but . .

. I have tried to explain these things toyou before, but I have not managed todo that . . .

Girl: . . . Yes, get to the point (interruptshim).

Boy: Yes, but . . . ok, it is easier to tellstraight away.

Girl: [with a huge smile] YEEES.Boy:I am bsolskfjdkkiffBlackout



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Gilje 509

professional practice and has been critically discussed as a tool for learningabout moving images (Buckingham, Grahame, & Sefton-Green, 1995;

Buckingham & Sefton-Green, 1994). It is argued that storyboarding shouldserve as a resource to develop students ability to visualize before shootingas well as a resource when editing (Sefton-Green, 1995). In regard to writingstudies, storyboarding concerns working with other modes than those foundin written communication. In my analytical account it illustrates the processof transduction, from the written mode into the visual mode in the studentsfilmmaking.

The analytical topic in Excerpt 2a concerns how the students use the story-board as a resource when visualizing the script. Taking a multimodal per-spective, the students have to transduct the story from the written to the visualmode. Or in terms of redesign, how do the students draw across modes fromthe script to the particular shot where the boy reveals his secret in Scene 5?

Excerpt2a:StudentsUsingtheStoryboardasaResource

1. Ida: But the boy, how shall we see him when he says it? Shall we

see the girl or the boy? [moves her hands in line with the word thegirlthe boy]. (See Figure 3a)

2. Ida: What?3. Lisbeth: I think we should have.4. Sarah:We should have this kind.5. Lisbeth: Because, now it must look like . . .6. Sarah: Yes, we must (show) only the boy.7. Lisbeth: . . . only the boy.

8. Sarah: . . . It is the girl in a way [who] sees him disappear [leansforward and starts to point at the storyboard].9. Lisbeth: Now. Now.

10. Ida: Then we maybe should see her [the girl] in a medium-closeshot, then [starts to draw on the storyboard].

11. Sarah: We could think of, I believe, we could use this [pointing atthe storyboard], but that will be all wrong, because in a way we aresupposed to see him disappear and then it becomes silly that she

also disappears [addressing the question of using a picture of boththe girl and the boy]. (See Figure 3b)12. Lisbeth: We have to look at him [from her perspective] with

her eyes.



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13. Ida: Okay, from her [perspective] eyes.14. Lisbeth: From her point . . . Point of view.15. Sarah: I am shewedhedh [reading the line in the script and makes

a sound afterwards scheeye].16. Ida: Blackout (original in English).17. Sarah: You better write: fading to black [original in English]. (6

to 7 seconds)18. Ida: Yes, nice . . . yes, I will . . . (but) ahhhh . . . I am unsure about

how we shall do thisstill. [Pointing at frame with her pencil: seeFigure 3c]

19. Sarah: Unsure?20. Lisbeth: Yes, butwe shouldwhat do you think?21. Sarah: But, we must haveI am thinking about the frame. How

how (the shot) should be framed.

22. Ida: I . . . I dont know.23. Lisbeth: Then we just.24. Sarah: We can only see him. You should not see anything else; we

should not see her in the picture anyway, because she cannot fadeout [of the picture].

25. Ida: We could have a close-up of his mouth while he says it [laugh-ing]. And then we use slow motion. Yes. No. [Laughs] (Figure3d)

26. Ida: We write [writes] . . .BLACK OUT

.In Line 1, Ida articulates how the visual modethe shotshould relate to

speech when the boy unravels his secret in the key scene. She points at the

Figure 3. The storyboard as a resource: (a) Ida moves her hands in line with theword girl, (b), Sarah pointing at the storyboard, (c) Ida pointing at the frame withher pencil, and (d) Ida drawing parentheses around the shot.



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Gilje 511

key sentence in the script and gesticulates afterwards when she utters, Butthe boy, how shall we see him when he says it? Shall we see the girl or the

boy? In doing so, she opens up a discussion of how to frame the shot, anissue that is further supported with her gesticulation. This question sparks adiscussion between Sarah and Ida. In Lines 2 to 7, they talk and interrupt eachother, arguing that only the boy must be shown in the picture when he revealshis secret. In Lines 8 to 14, Sarah strengthens her viewpoint by discussingtwo different shots (Line 11), and Ida pushes the process forward by suggest-ing a medium-close shot. Ida starts to draw in one of the frames on the story-

board sheet.While Ida is drawing, Sarah articulates the line that the boy should say.

Looking at the script, she says with a whispering sound, I am shewedhedh(in Line 15). Ida continues to draw and Sarah says, Fading to black. Idauses another 6 to 7 seconds to complete the drawing of the boy in the frame.She says Aaaaah and is about to conclude the session. The utterance inLine 18 might illustrate that she is still unsure of how to work out this keyscene. In the next line, she jokes about this and suggests that they shouldshow his mouth in a close-up when he reveals his secret. She also suggests(in Line 26) that they should use slow motion to blur what he is saying.

Two topics of analytical interest evolve throughout this event. The first islocated in the first part of the excerpt, Lines 1 to 14. The challenge the stu-dents are facing here is about how to frame the boy when he reveals hissecret. How do they visually show this moment of truth? Previous to thisevent, the students have already sketched out the different shots in this par-ticular scene. These drawings become important resources when discussingthe final shot in the scene. In Lines 4, 6, 8, and 11, Sarah elaborates her argu-ment. She says in Line 8, It is the girl in a way [who] sees him disappear

[leans forward and starts to point at the storyboard]. By this she uses thestoryboard as a resource for elaborating on her argument, and she states bythis how to represent visually the crucial moment in the story. This view isconfirmed in the end of Part 1 where Lisbeth and Ida conclude the discussioncollaboratively by saying, We have to look at him with her eyes. Idaconfirms, Okay, from her eyes. And Lisbeth again elaborates, adding anotion usually used in film language, From her point . . . Point of view(Line 14).

Even if the students terminate the issue of finalizing the scene in the firstpart of the event, a second topic is apparent in the storyboard as well as in thestudent interactionthe two shots: an ultra close-up of the boys mouth and



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a close-up of his face. In film language, the former is usually understood as ashot used to emphasize a detail. At the end of the excerpt (Line 26), Ida says,

We could have a close-up of his mouth while he says it [laughing]. And thenwe use slow motion. Yes. No [Laughs]. There are two interesting aspects inIdas statement. Ida indicates that the shot could be a close-up, which she alsodraws (but, making brackets around itsee Figure 3d). At the same time, shesuggests that his utterance could be manipulated into slow motion. This clari-fication pays attention to how the boys voice could be blurred in one way oranother, bluntly suggested by Ida. This might indicate that Ida and the rest ofthe group are still unsure about how this scene will communicate. This ten-sion is emerging as part of the interaction and sense making when sketchingout the storyboard. In this way, the activity of drawing the storyboard bringsthe issue of not solving the scene to the surface. They have moved one stepcloser to production but have not yet figured out how the key scene should berecorded or framed while shooting, an issue I will return to in the finalexcerpt that follows.

The second research question in this article concerns the process of rede-sign. This multimodal lens provides an opportunity to look at the affor-dances and constraints in the different modes when orchestrating a

multimodal text. In this perspective, the drawing of the storyboard is a pro-cess where the students discuss different modes in order to communicatethe key scene in the movie visually. Short written stories and short filmshave different semiotic resources for making meaning. Characters that in ashort story exist in the mode of writing must be transducted in order toappear in the mode of image. In an image representation, the distance

between the two characters has to be shown, and a specific shot must beattached to a line uttered by the actor(s). With her utterance, Sarah mediates

the connection between the script and the activity of drawing the storyboardin Line 11. She states, I am shewedhedh, with a whispering sound, andby that she connects the line to be stated by the actor to the particular shotin the storyboard.

After Ida has finished drawing the particular shot, the storyboard hasachieved the role of a blueprint for shooting Scene 5. Idas statement, I amunsure about how we shall do thisstill, is ambivalent. One might suggestthat Sarah thinks Ida is still unsure about the chosen frame, and Sarah starts

again to argue that a medium-close shot of the boy is the most apt semioticresource. Another interpretation could be made in relation to Idas statementwhen making the film synopsis. This latter interpretation puts an emphasis



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Gilje 513

on how the process of drawing the storyboard, in the same way as workingwith the film synopsis, illuminates the challenges with this particular key

scene in the movie. This topic of interest, which has been located in two dif-ferent events, needs now further elaboration.

Subsection3:DeployingResources

WhenRedesigninginFilmmaking

As demonstrated, the students were challenged in their work of redesigningthe story from the mode of written text to the mode of moving images in theirfilmmaking practice. In particular, the key scenewhere the boy reveals hissecretchallenged the students at every step in their filmmaking process. Onlocation, when shooting, they followed the storyboard strictly, and they alsomade a close-up shotas sketched out in the storyboardof the boy utteringthe line, I am gay, and I am in love with your brother. When editing in

postproduction, they worked with video and audio effects and video filters inorder to blur this particular statement. This work was already indicated by Idawhen storyboarding. After having tried for 7 to 8 hours to blur this particularshot using audio filters, slow motion, and a Gaussian blur filter, they ended

up removing the whole shot where the boy reveals his secret (Gilje, in press).Thus, it is illuminating to look into how the movie and more specifically

the key scene actually is interpreted by peer students. In this case, an eventwhere Sarah asked two other girls (Sophia and Heidi) to watch the nearlyfinal version ofThreesome is interesting to explore further (see Appendix 1).By looking at the film in the interface of the editing software, the studentswere able to address the viewing window as well as timeline (see Figure 4a).In Excerpt 3, Sarah shows the movie to the other two students who sit in front

of the computer screen to view the film.

Excerpt3:InterpretationofScene5

byanInformalAudienceofPeers

1. Male character: I have wished to tell it for a long time now.2. Sarah: Is it too loud now? [Whispering and asks if the volume should

be adjusted]3. Male character: . . . but I have not dared to.4. Female character: Please tell it.5. Male character: I just say it straight away (Figure 4a).



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6. Female character: Yes [the shot in the movie turns abruptly intoblack, Figure 4b].

7. Sophia:No!What happens? . . . Oh, yes.8. Sarah: It is meant to be like that . . .

Excerpt 3 illustrates how the key scene in the short fiction film is inter-preted by two spectators in situ. The interesting moment to look closely at isin Lines 6, 7, and 8. Sophias utterance, No! What happens?, illustrates herspontaneous interpretation of the particular transition from the shot of the boy(Figure 4a) to the blackout (Figure 4b). This reaction elucidates that Sophia,as a spectator, needs a second before she realizes what is happening in themovie. Her full interpretation of the scene after a moment is indicated with

the utterance, Oh, yes. After Heidi and Sophia have finished viewing themovie, Sarah stops it and immediately addresses the audience of peer-students by asking what happened: What did happen? Heidi answers, Hewas a homosexual? (with a rising intonation), and Sophia starts then to sug-gest how to reedit the film. The point to be flagged here is not how the filmwas edited in its final version, but the excerpt indicates that the peer students

become resources for Sarah and the rest of the group in terms of rewriting thepiece before its final version. Moreover, the excerpt indicates that the authors

and makers ofThreesome

broke some basic conventions of moving-imagelanguage when editing this transition. The immediate reaction by Sophia inExcerpt 3, No! What happens?, indicates that she did not understand thescene immediately. In many ways, this unsolved scene, evident also in the

Figure 4. Scene 5: (a) Male character in the key scene, and (b) Fading to blackwithout hearing the utterance.



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Gilje 515

analysis of the film synopsis and script, is still not worked out properly inregard to communicating the plot point of the short fiction film. This leads to

a reaction where the spectators immediately tell one of the authors that theyare unsure about the meaning of the scene. And in the session afterwards,they collaboratively and immediately start to suggest a way to reedit the

piece. The excerpt illustrates how ideas, scenes, and transitions may be testedand replayed in a collaborative process where the author discusses and getscomments from peer students, a process that is rather unexplored in previousstudies of film and audience (Burn, 2009). When analyzing such an event as

part of a longer trajectory, the writing process across modes in the filmmak-ing process is further illustrated by investigating how the language of movingimages works.

Conclusion

The study presented here has explored how three students work with onespecific meaning in a particular scene in a short fiction movie. The analysisfollows the trajectory of the key scene in the movie, across different modesin the students filmmaking across time. The research questions have raised

issues concerning multimodal text-making practices: (a) focusing on how thestudents deploy and adopt semiotic tools, like script and storyboard and peerstudents as a resource in their filmmaking, and (b) how the key scene in themovie is redesigned in this filmmaking practice. In doing so, the trajectoryof the students particular meaning is identified within and across modes intheir filmmaking. In specific ways, the analysis indicates that in the exactmoment where the semiosis is brought to a standstill in texts (i.e., their syn-opsis, manuscript, storyboard, and nearly finished film showed to peer stu-

dents), the students state that they are unsure about the semiotic resourcesused in written and visual modes.Moreover, the analyses illustrate that storyboard and manuscript do not

have discernible effects on students work with moving images in their ownsense. Instead, their efficiency is very much dependent on how such resourcesare deployed in their composing practice. In the case of making this particularkey scene in the short fiction film, there is an increasing tension in the eventswhere the students are supposed to use the resources provided by the setting.

This tension is in a sense resolved by making the role of the resource smallerin their meaning making. The students use the script and film synopsis asexpected by the teacher, and, by this, document their assignment, but they donot manage to deploy these semiotic tools as tools for thinking about the

plot point as well as using them to enhance visual aspects of the key scene as



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part of the narrative in their film. As shown in the analysis previously, thisway of eliminating tension is not a workable way to solve filmmaking prob-

lems. The analysis indicates that the learners only move the problem fromone mode to another, a point that is illustrated with the peer students in thelast excerpt drawn from the postproduction phase of their filmmaking.

By conducting such an analysis, I aim to contribute in two distinct ways tothe field of writing studies. First, I seek to identify a meeting point betweenresearch on media literacy and writing studies, a point where research onmedia literacy and sociocultural studies of writing seem to overlap in media-infused educational contexts. Although the study does a close analysis of thefilmmaking process, similar processes of composing and writing multimodaltexts may be informed by such an approach. Second, the article aims todevelop a method that combines a sociocultural and a multimodal analyticalapproach of composing practices over time. In this sense, the article may

push thinking forward about practices of writing in the media-infused class-room. Following this line of thought, I agree with Ranker who suggests thata promising area for future research in digital composing practices would beto systematically study the dimensions of how social interaction duringwriting processes lead to particular types of uses and combinations of semi-

otic resources in multimedia composing environments (Ranker, 2008,p. 230). The contribution of this article to the field of writing studies is tofurther elaborate on such a perspective by combining a sociocultural and amultimodal analysis of the trajectory of a specific meaning across studentscomposing practices over time.

Appendix 1: Norwegian Transcripts

Excerpt1a

Sarah: Vi m skrive hva avslutningen er, men det er ikke vi helt enigei om da . . .

Lisbeth: Nei men vi kan jo skrive at det . . . det slutter med at . . . [Idabegins to type at the keyboard].

Sarah: seerne forstr p en symbolsk mte at detIda: Ja, det slutter, jaSarah: . . . at han er homo

Ida: det slutter med at seerne via en symbo . . . nei vent da, via ensymbolsk fremstilling nei vent da. . . . [types again] via en symbolskfremstilling . . . nei, ikke fremstillingdet er ikke riktig.

Lisbeth: Via symboler [Ida types while Lisbeth is talking].

(continued)



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Gilje 517

Ida: Via symboler . . . [types the wrong key on the keyboard] herregud. . . symboler . . . i filmen, skjnner seeren at..

Sarah: Gutten er homoLisbeth:Nei, homofilIda: At gutten er homofil.. [Ida and Lisbeth laugh] det hres teit ut. . . .Ida:. ja men er det greit? . . . Det er jo bare synopsis

Excerpt1b

Essay, originally written by Ida in secondary school.

Han tok mot til seg og snudde seg mot henne. Det jeg forteller deg n skaldu holde hemmelig, er det greit?, spurte han. Hun nikket. Du er den frste

jeg forteller det til, fortsatte han. Det er enklere fortelle det til deg fordi. . ., fordi du er jente: N var hun helt sikker p at det ikke var noen dypekjrlighetserklringer det var snakk om. Hun var usikker p om hun villehre det som ville bli sagt. Det ble en pinlig taushet. Han forventet kanskje

at hun skulle si noe. Hva er det du vil fortelle meg da?, spurte hun. Hansukket tungt og s kom han med det. Deretter ble det helt stille

Scene5:Manuscript

Tilbake p benken/bakkenGir en klemJenta:ja . . . eh . . . s var det du ville si meg

Gutten: Jo . . . i det siste har jeg jo merket at du har gitt meg signaler, og..Jenta:Ja, Ja?Gutten:Jeg vet dette kanskje virker litt teit, men .. Jeg har prvd

fortelle deg det tidligere, men jeg har bare ikke klart det. . . .Jenta: Ja kom til poenget da (avbryter)Gutten:Ja, men. . . . ok, det er lettere om jeg bare sier det rett utJenta: smiler bredt, JAAAGutten:jeg er bsolskfjsdkkiffBlackout

Excerpt2a

Ida: Men gutten, hvordan skal vi se han nr han sier det. Skal vi se pjenta, skal vi se p gutten? Hva..

Appendix 1 (continued)

(continued)



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Lisbeth: Jeg syns vi skal ha . . .

Sarah: Vi kan jo ha snn da . . .Lisbeth: For n er det liksomSarah: Jo vi m bare ha gutten for n erLisbeth: . . . bare guttenSarah: . . ..det jenta sitt som p en mte . . . ser han forsvinne. Vi

kunne jo, jeg tenker snn, vi kunne brukt den, men det blir feilfor vi skal liksom se han forsvinne og da blir det teit at hun fors-vinner og..

Lisbeth: Vi m se han i hennes yneIda: Ok, fra hennes yneLisbeth: Ja, fra hennes synsvinkel.Ida: Black outSarah: Du kan bare skrive fade into black. Eller fading til svart.Ida: Ja vent da. . . .Ja, jeg fr . . . jeg er veldig usikker egentlig p hvor-

dan vi skal gjre det, fortsattSarah: Usikker

Lisbeth: Ja men vi burde. Hva tenker du da?Sarah: Men vi m jo ha, tenker du p utsnittet, hvordan.. hvor stort viskal se?

Lisbeth: At vi bare . . .Sarah: Vi kan bare se han. Du kan jo ikke se noe annet, vi kan jo ikke se

henne i bilde i hvertfall, for hun kan jo ikke fade ut i bildeIda: Vi kan jo ikke ha nrbilde av munnen hans mens han sier det. S

tar vi slow motion hehe. Ja, nei . . . men ja, vi skriver . . .

Lisbeth: Prikker, snn derre..Ida: . . . black out.

Excerpt3a

Male character: Jeg ville nske si ganske lenge n . . .Sarah: er det for hyt n?.. [Spr hviskende om volumet er for hyt]Male character: . . . men jeg har ikke turtFemale character: S si det daMale character: Jeg bare sier det rett utFemale character: JaSophia: Nei hva skjer? ja det er meningen (skjermen blir svart, neste

klipp ligger hun p soverommet)

Appendix 1 (continued)



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Gilje 519

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship

and/or publication of this article.Funding

The author received financial support for the research and authorship of this articlefrom the Faculty of Education, University of Oslo as it is part of his PhD thesiswritten as a collection of four articles.

Notes

1. Media production is the core activity in the new subject media and commu-

nication (medier og kommunikasjon) in Norway. In contrast with the moreacademic approach founded in the mid-1980s, the new subject media andcommunication is a practically oriented subject following the vocationalstream as a 3-year-long program in upper secondary schools in Norway.During the past 10 years, the number of students applying for the course hasincreased dramatically, and in the 2008-2009 school year, 1 out of 20 young-sters in the age group 16 to 19 in Norway joined this course. In general, thecourse provides an introduction to basic principles in media and communica-

tion: combining text, images, and sound to lay a broad foundation for highereducation and work within the creative sector. Furthermore, the course dealswith various forms of communication, content distribution, and expressionwithin diverse media genres and fields (movie, photo, advertisement, andweb applications). The following core subjects are included in the course syl-labuses: media and communication, the individual and society, mediadesign, media production, and history of expression.

2. This is part of a current trend in the Nordic countries where state-governed

film festivals and websites for young filmmakers, such as www.dvoted.net, areoffered as arenas through which young filmmakers express themselves. Forexample, the two largest film festivals for youngsters in Sweden and Norwayreceive more than 1000 films in total, engaging thousands of youngsters in film-making several weeks each year. A dominant number of these films are made inthe increasingly popular media and communication subject in upper secondaryschools in Norway as well as in Sweden.

3. In the Amandus 2006 project, it was quite common to show the film to other stu-

dents when it was nearly finished. These screenings were informal; sometimesstudents who just happened to be sitting nearby watched a movie, and othertimes students asked other student(s) from classrooms nearby to watch and com-ment on their specific movie.



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Bio

Dr. ystein Gilje, holds a post doc position at Faculty of Education,UniversityofOsloin the project Learning Lives led by Professor Ola Erstad. His doctoral thesis Mode,

Mediation and Moving ImagesAn Inquiry of digital editing practices in MediaEducation discusses text making as remixing when students make meaning withmoving images. Gilje has published several articles and reports on young people anddigital media production, some of them together with Professor Ola Erstad.

Written Communication 2010 Gilje 494 522

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