The revolution starts... now...

Read more at my new blog: Education Revolution.

A rant about the chart from Piled Higher and Deeper going around the Facebooks...

For the comic, see here...

My pay ain't on here. I teach ~74% of full time (usually a 3/3/2 load, for those in the know). I'm paid by gift cards (a thank you for doing my damn job), free dinners (department meeting at the Golden Corral, yo), the student that comes back two semesters later telling me he's still thinking about Akira Kurosawa's use of color in Ran, the student this semester who told me my speech class got him through his sister's funeral, the student who told me that our screening and class discussion of Miss Representation changed his life. I get paid in heartbreak for every "E" grade that I enter, every student who didn't quite make it and might not be coming back again. I get paid in standing at commencement with the full time faculty whose pay you see below and applauding until my hands hurt the ~4,000 students who did make it.

But I don't get paid enough to make it myself. I'm damn lucky, I'm not the only one making money in my family, and my spare time is usually running kids around, taking care of kids, taking care of the needs of my family. My profession doesn't respect me enough to pay me what I'm worth. So I have to subsist on the other things.

Standby: Overhaul coming soon.

I've been thinking recently what to do with this space... the ideas that I have come mostly from these two sources:

The Awesome anthem by Sekou Andrews.

Classrooms of the Future by Claire Potter.

Standby. More to come.

Teaching _Do The Right Thing_

Inevitably, at least once a semester in one of my classes, I show Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. It's a fantastically well made film, in terms of everything important in film making. The exposition of the characters isn't overly long, it's an ensemble piece, the cinematography is breathtaking, the music fits so well, the attention to how the film affects it's audience throughout, and so on, and so on...

It is also alienating. I watch my students sit quietly and struggle through the film, not entirely certain if they are getting anything from it. I often talk about how my hope for classes like Film and Culture is that I throw lots of different ideas at them and hope that something sticks - but I never really get to know what takes a hold in their minds and what they dismiss as being irrelevant.

Can I prepare them better? I don't think so. I think the nature of Do The Right Thing is to be in your face, to confront issues of race and racism and not let the audience up to breathe. The best approach I find is to talk about the history of black film making and black film makers, then watch the film, then try to talk about it afterwards. Sometimes the discussions are interesting and heated, and other times the discussions are quiet and require more prompting on my part to end up anywhere.

I don't plan on changing this film out for another any time soon.

Film and Culture: Week 2 - Film Form

Film and Culture Week 2

ñ  Pre-class survey or quiz on difficult parts of the textbook that need expanding.

◦   Use polleverywhere.com

ñ  Discussion of Pelada

ñ  Demonstrate online discussion

ñ  Film form lecture

◦   Mise En Scene

▪   Use shot from Kagemusha

◦   Shot – Scene – Sequence

◦   Cinematography

▪   Clip from intro video?

◦   Editing

▪   Three purposes of editing

ñ  Continuity

ñ  Meaning

ñ  Deception

▪   Kuleshov Effect

◦   Sound Design

▪   Room Tone Track

▪   Score

▪   ADR

◦   Diagetic elements vs non-diagetic elements

◦   Types of Film

▪   Narrative

▪   Documentary

▪   Direct Cinema

▪   Experimental

◦   Genres of film

ñ  Ideology / Cultural studies

◦   Discussion of what the terms in the book mean

◦   Idea of who is in power vs who is not – how they are represented

◦   Def of Culture (values, beliefs, and norms)

◦   Invisibility of Culture

◦   high art / low art

◦   communication model (graphic)

ñ  Studio system

◦   Traditional story structure

◦   “Golden Era” moviemaking

▪   Movie theater experience

▪   Big 5 (majors)

ñ  WB

ñ  MGM

ñ  20^th C Fox

ñ  RKO

ñ  Paramount

▪   Little 3

ñ  Columbia

ñ  Universal

ñ  United Artists (Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin)

ñ  Break!

ñ  Watch The Artist

ñ  Break

ñ  Discuss The Artist

ñ  Online Discussion 

Back to School, week 1

...aaand we are back.

I missed blogging the last few weeks of class mostly because I ran out of energy and time at the end of the semester. Let me alleviate that by showing you a student's final project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9f12u-MsZw

This week is mostly about reading syllabi, orienting ourselves to the content and form, and from my end there is a lot of registration headaches. Waitlists are supposed to make our lives easier and sometimes they just make things more confusing.

My first film and culture class was on Wednesday, this is what they came up with:

More soon - A. 

Intro to Film: Week 5

Intro to Film Week 5

Preclass: Need Steenbeck website, picture, Final Cut Pro picture, Serenity, Kuleshov video

• Discuss Million Dollar Baby particularly in terms of cinematography
• Start talking about final project
  • Proposal and Rubric due July 22^nd
  • Final Project due August 5^th
  • Gallery stroll due at the same time
    • Possibility of visitors
  • Criteria for project
    • Needs to be treated as a capstone worth 30% of final grade
    • Needs to reflect how your understanding of film as a whole has changed throughout the semester
    • Holistic – really should be an assignment that you do for yourself
    • Developing a rubric
      • MUST have following items (at least 10% each)
        • Quality of work
        • Quantity of work
        • Adherence to form
        • Demonstration of understanding
      • (Default rubric is 25% each)
      • Rubric will be used to grade project
      • Will be graded by me during final class period
      • Need to know any performance needs (video, audio, etc)
  • Questions / Discussion
• Editing Lecture
  • What is editing?
    • Physical film – editing table
      • (www.steenbeck.com)
    • Digital editing
      • Final Cut Pro (screenshot)
  • Relationship between Shot, Scene, Sequence
    • Good place for set procedure (shot)
      • Picture is up / Quiet on the set
      • Camera ready?
        • Ready
      • Sound ready?
        • Ready
      • Roll Sound
        • Speed
      • Roll Camera
        • Speed
      • Marker (or slate)
        • 2ac reads and claps
      • (dir only) Action
      • (dir only) Cut
    • Clip from Serenity, Talk about Russian Ark
  • Kinds of transitions
    • Cuts
      • Jump
      • Parallel movement
      • Match
    • Fade
    • Dissolve
    • Wipe
  • Purposes of editing
    • Editing for Continuity
      • Same people in the same place
      • 180-rule
    • Editing for Meaning
      • Kuleshov effect
      • Connecting ideas and people together through similar positioning
        • Match cut, parallel movement cut
    • Editing for deception
      • LOTR: sizes of characters
• Watch for all 3 types of editing in this film.
• Break
• The Social Network