My House

A lot of people have asked me about my house. This picture is a postcard I made to answer that question. The back side of the post card goes like this:

"Salt Lake is great. The new apartment is beautiful. School and David are keeping me busy, though, and I'm still living out of boxes. I'll give you a call when I put my life back together."

CONVERSATION

ANY conversations relating to media education or movies in general that you would like to start?

Put them in the comments HERE.

YOUR IDEAS?

Any ideas for other cool things I could put on my blog?

A JORDAN WILLOWS WALK

This is a very personal film that I made for my mother. She wrote this poem. One day we went on a walk along the Jordan River. It was beautiful and inspiring. The production quality isn't very high, but it is one of my favorite creations because it represents relationships that are important to me:

mother to daughter
parent to child

I often wonder if the film has a larger audience beyond me and my mother.

Does it speak to you? What does it say?

I MADE A FILM ONCE

I made a film once. More than once. Here's one of the films I made.



Did you like that film?

What is going on in that film? What's the story? I know what story I wanted to tell. Now I want to know what story you actually saw.

My Teaching Philosophy - Work in Progress

My Teaching Philosophy is a work in progress. I'm going to put up some ideas here about it.

IDEAS
The idea is all about finding individual voice and identity. For me, this means doing it through the medium of film, but concepts could apply to all sorts of learning.

RIGHT AND WRONG?
I'm not so concerned with ideas of "right" and "wrong" in the context of "the way to do things." I'm more concerned with the idea of communication. So, "the ways to do things" or "how do you want to do things?" Maybe another way to say it is: what are you trying to communicate? That's the one thing essential.

ONE UNIVERSAL RULE
There is one universal rule: you have to know what it is you want to communicate. What you actually communicate to the viewer is up to interpretation by them, but you have to want to construct a meaning of some kind.

IMPORTANT POINT
A filmmaker MUST want to communicate SOMETHING. They just have to know what story they want to tell. Otherwise, it doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it.

INTERRPRETATION - OR MUDDYING THE WATERS
This means, I like to talk about ways of communicating effectively. So, we definitely learn the conventions of film making, but I want to promote the idea that there are infinite "correct" ways of doing things. What makes something correct, then, is contingent on the circumstances of the particular film project in question or the film's objectives (this is just another way of saying the message or the meaning, or the story). There are guidelines for how to make films "effectively" and how to communicate. But! The film maker is, in the end, in control of that universe (the film universe or universe within the film). The idea is that filmmakers realize their creative potential. Instead of the film concepts ruling the filmmaker (either because they don't know what to do with these elements or they ignore them), the filmmaker rules the film concepts and uses them to tell the kind of stories that they want to tell.

ESSENCES
That is the essence of my teaching philosophy. Now I just need to develop it so that it makes sense to other people besides myself. This blog is part of that.

What do you think about all of these rambling sentences and ideas?

I'm working on some particular lectures in the context of film production in which to house these philosophies.

Here's my outlines for EDITING:

FOR EDITING:
(And by editing here I mean how shots are strung together and which kind of shots may or may not be valued over others).

•Present Andre Bazin’s filming/editing objectives vs Eisenstein’s filming/editing
objectives and ask how those might be translated into visuals.

•Show examples of both.

•Then talk about the strengths and weaknesses of both.

•Ask students which one they like more, and why.

•Ask them which one is the better one to use?
Answer: neither or both. What objective are you trying to achieve in your narrative?



HOW DO YOU THINK FILM SHOULD BE TAUGHT?

SHOULD IT?

Haiku Conversations

Poems, even when constructed independently, have somethings to say to each other.

The words by issa above the title represent two haikus: One posed the query, the other answered.

I have some somethings to say as well, which hopefully will turn into conversations of their own.

Join me in the discussion?