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Opinion

Teaching filmmaking via videoconference isn’t as natural as it sounds

Education is about the one-on-one moments that inspire a student.

I have been teaching the practice of the cinematic arts in the college and university environment since 1978. Over the years, I have had to learn new technologies and ways to teach them, as the tools of filmmaking evolved. It seems that every few years there would be new formats of software that changed so much. As technology changes, so changes the art.

I teach filmmaking at the University of Texas at Arlington, and when it became clear that after spring break that we would not be coming back to in-person teaching, I was faced with the big question: How do you teach a class like film production that is heavy on hands-on instruction and learning?

I need to teach students, for example, how a light works and see what happens as you finesse it. In my intermediate class, students were supposed to learn and shoot 16 mm film. There is no way to do that when they can’t get to campus to get the film camera, and the laboratories that process and transfer the film are not in business. This was going to be challenging.

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One of the most amazing things about confronting these challenges was how film teachers got together to help each other. A member of the University Film and Video Association (of which I am on the board) started a group on Facebook called Teaching Film, Media, Screenwriting & Production Online for COVID-19. Teachers shared resources, successes and assignments. The specific information was both inspiring and useful.

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The first step was reworking the projects, substituting work that could be done from home with mobile devices and software. For example, in one project, students were to re-create a scene from a classic film to learn about film language. Students used Legos, stuffed bears, family members as actors, and animation to learn the core value of the assignment. For the 16 mm film project, I substituted an assignment where they film an object that has special meaning to them (shooting and lighting expressively) and creating a soundscape that, in a non-literal way, evokes that meaning. This substitutes one skill (16 mm film) with shooting tabletop.

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Using Zoom, I could see the faces of some students in my class, but not all of them. It was clear early on how income inequality made this much worse. Some students did not have working webcams. Some had slow internet, so they could not show video with audio. Some students’ computers were not good enough to run video editing software. One student who needed a good computer and good internet had to come to school, but the only way to get there was to have her mother drive her, which meant she had to miss work.

Students learned, but perhaps not what we had expected going in.

In the short term, we have done a good job of learning on the fly. But long term, we need to be face-to-face, learning how to control lights, cameras and sound gear, helping students edit by being there when they get lost and helping them through the situation. So much of good teaching is about personal mentoring. In film, only so much of that can happen online.

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What I really worry about is the future. I fear that we will have a two-tiered system of high-end schools that have a majority of in-person classes while others are primarily online. While there are many things that online learning can offer, spending significant time with each student is not one of them.

A college education is as much about learning how to think as it is what you learn. Learning how to change, how to adapt, how to think, and, for us, how to tell stories is critical. For me, it was the one-on-one moments that teachers spent with me that motivated, inspired and taught me. It is what I try to re-create for my students. I hope we can still do this. It is hard to do this, looking at a screen full of Zoom faces.

Barton C. Weiss is an associate professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Arlington, founder and director of the Dallas VideoFest, producer of Frame of Mind on KERA and co-host of the podcast the Fog of Truth. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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