Birdwatching, is a thirty-minute film made by high school senior, Andy Keyes. Keyes created the film as his final exhibition for the Classics Academy and it was previewed by an audience a few weeks ago.
It's a quirky work that is oddly compelling. As one who grew up listening to Lou Reed, the work speaks to me through the selection of music and the visual work--more so than the actual plot. I love how the camera sees the figures in the film: follows them, crosses paths with them, holds still as they move away, swoops--birdlike.
I appreciate partial stories--the ones we don't get to know too well as it allows room for the viewer to roam a bit. We never know the whole of anything--let alone another's life. It is the partial tellings that are most compelling in art and watching Birdwatching makes me wonder how students, like Andy, come to learn this sophistication. For this project, Andy was mentored by filmmakers Ben Donnellon and Mike Butler (also his teacher).
When we think about composing, we need to actively broaden our definition from the limited understanding of composition as a paper and pen matter to resituating it within multiple arts such as film, screencasts, photography, movement, orchestration, song, voice, visual arts (mixed media, painting, sketching), and remixed and multimodal works.
Below is a trailer, my son, Devon made to advertise his server. He's 13 and self-taught--like so many other young people who find expression through image, video, and sound.
I post both of these works to suggest that we need to seriously broaden what counts as composition at school. Having students write these endless responses to written test prompts is a waste of time and we need to stop limiting the idea of composition to what a student can put on paper in a week's time. Let's lean in and see what actual composing students are doing in innovative programs like Classic Academy and film classes, as well as out of school. We can map the skills, dispositions, and strategies that are taught in more traditional composition classes on to these multimodal works. That's the task--not to make learners abandon their passions, but to help shape their learning through those passions and the mapping we jointly compose.
Our collective response to the Common Core State Standards cannot be limited to having students write endless argumentative, expository, or narrative essays in response to test prompts.
It's a quirky work that is oddly compelling. As one who grew up listening to Lou Reed, the work speaks to me through the selection of music and the visual work--more so than the actual plot. I love how the camera sees the figures in the film: follows them, crosses paths with them, holds still as they move away, swoops--birdlike.
I appreciate partial stories--the ones we don't get to know too well as it allows room for the viewer to roam a bit. We never know the whole of anything--let alone another's life. It is the partial tellings that are most compelling in art and watching Birdwatching makes me wonder how students, like Andy, come to learn this sophistication. For this project, Andy was mentored by filmmakers Ben Donnellon and Mike Butler (also his teacher).
When we think about composing, we need to actively broaden our definition from the limited understanding of composition as a paper and pen matter to resituating it within multiple arts such as film, screencasts, photography, movement, orchestration, song, voice, visual arts (mixed media, painting, sketching), and remixed and multimodal works.
Below is a trailer, my son, Devon made to advertise his server. He's 13 and self-taught--like so many other young people who find expression through image, video, and sound.
I post both of these works to suggest that we need to seriously broaden what counts as composition at school. Having students write these endless responses to written test prompts is a waste of time and we need to stop limiting the idea of composition to what a student can put on paper in a week's time. Let's lean in and see what actual composing students are doing in innovative programs like Classic Academy and film classes, as well as out of school. We can map the skills, dispositions, and strategies that are taught in more traditional composition classes on to these multimodal works. That's the task--not to make learners abandon their passions, but to help shape their learning through those passions and the mapping we jointly compose.
Our collective response to the Common Core State Standards cannot be limited to having students write endless argumentative, expository, or narrative essays in response to test prompts.
