M EDIA COMPOSITION PRACTICES IN ACTION

Michelle-Cannon-phd-movie-data.mp4 at 06:31’ on the DVD, or the same here:

https://vimeo.com/142087018 [Accessed 21 September 2015, password = wizard]

Whole group collaboration

Clip 6 involves a brief montage of the children’s engagement in green screen manipulation, that is, in that perceived ‘professional’ dimension of film-making related to video effects. Historical continuity, which is important for linking their activities to the outside world, is present in the sourcing of their shot know-how. The split screen whereby Clara is face to face with her Clone, had been Dual 2’s idea a few weeks before, and they had researched how to achieve the effect on YouTube.

Filming it, however, had not been altogether successful, as it required more precise alignment than was possible to achieve without a tripod. The green screen was a workaround suggested by Nimbus: that we cut out a misaligned background and superimpose the figure of the Clone onto the original footage. This was phronetic intelligence in practice. After several attempts the resultant effect was not perfect, in that the Clone is perceived on screen as smaller than her mirror image. However,

with a pragmatic leap of the imagination, it was deemed that this could in fact fit the plot, as her otherworldly powers were on the wane.

In a similar fashion the last green screen sequence (from 08:31’ in Clip 6) involving the Clone arriving ‘home’ inside the computer, sees the team working together intuitively to achieve the visual objective. At first Clara resorted to lurching rigidly across the screen, suggesting she was at a loss as to how her character should behave - her improvisation skills, so in evidence in other scenes, seemed to have forsaken her.

Nimbus suggested that she interact with the imagined scenery on the bare screen ‘so that it would look as if she’s in her house.’ The rest of the sentence was barely audible because I started talking over him. Nimbus meekly reclaimed the idea as his own under his breath: ‘That was my idea’ all of which went unnoticed until watching the footage back - so concentrated was I on Clara’s performance and on getting a decent shot. What was heard was G-man’s response after my: ‘Oh yeah, a bit of interaction with the ...Nice.’, whereupon he affirmed: ‘It’s her home!’. He and the others were actively engaged in imagining the clone’s home. Indeed G-man’s tone implied the sentiment ‘why would she be doing anything else?’ as Clara explored the vertical axis of her backdrop, tweaking her fanciful, familiar domestic apparatus.

Figure 20: Clone Clara interacting with green screen, still from video.

Time constraints and the visceral, ‘in the moment’ quality of film-making increase the likelihood of this type of metacognitive refinement, or ‘possibility thinking’. In this instance, they were not only all having to imagine how the shot would eventually turn out, but they were also de-centering themselves sensitively enough to be able to imagine how a rationalising audience might be thinking when it was eventually screened. These leaps of the productive imagination are a feature of putative ‘higher order’ thinking in the literary world of written composition, but for some they can remain distant and unarticulated if language is the preferred mode of encoding it.

Moving image production manifests conceptual thinking in concrete ways, hence the

‘literacy value’ for those who struggle to articulate themselves in the spoken or written word.

What is clear from these clips is the children’s mobile and material improvisation, their determined and purposeful agency, and their social agility. There were no lesser roles in the production of these shots, they were pulling together to make them work – rhetorically, dialogically, reflexively and phronetically.

Practitioner insight: technological constraints

In this last section of green screen montage I found myself being more ‘teacherly’ for the sake of expediency; but this, and the fact of directing Clara to walk across the screen felt odd. I had gradually been relinquishing control of the Clip Club sessions, and throughout the project Clara has displayed a reliable, consistent and creative autonomy in her acting, as well as an uninhibited desire to explore and interact with her ‘found’ mise-en-scène. Her movements, which in prior scenes had exploited the z-axis (long depths of field) and a sense of freedom and expansiveness, were limited to walking several steps along a blunted horizontal axis - reminiscent of a

rudimentary theatrical set - within the narrow confines of a static letter box format, against flat ‘scenery’.

In pointing this out I draw attention to the fact that for all the sensationalism that appends the special effects now within reach of the amateur, they can at the same time constrain the ‘performance’ and dampen the agency of actors, which is as relevant an observation in the microcosm of school practices as it is in a macro sense in the wider social world. As will be discussed later, algorithmic software design necessarily determines the creative agency and autonomy of users, which suggests

the importance of encouraging users’ own creative strategies, where possible, and making them aware of the non-inevitability of having to select from a database.

J. Contextual interpretation: Clip Club findings