N IMBUS

Nimbus is a self-assured ten-year-old, proud of his self-styled ‘geek’ status and keen to be able to apply it. He is unusually eloquent and therefore not entirely

representative of the group, but he gives us a view of what a young media author might look like, as well as some pointers as to how he may develop. I asked him what he was enjoying about the Club a few weeks into the process.

Audio available at: https://soundcloud.com/shelleuk/phd-thesis-interview-1-nimbus-march-2013/s-BakNN [Accessed 20 September 2015]

Nimbus: What I really like about Clip Club is the fact that you’re with all these other people and instead of being limited to being enclosed in this one ... well... medium sized room, you can just wander round and film with your team mates or peers, and then share it with the rest of the group without being like ashamed that you had to take two shots of something or anything like that. It’s quite good.

Michelle: Mm, nice, yeah, erm, and ... what do you think, erm, what do you think you’re learning in the editing process?

Nimbus: Well I think I’m learning how to... how like ... like before I did this, I thought they did all the sounds and everything on location like. And they just did it while they were filming.

But now I found out that basically lots of the times, they get rid of the sound in the clip and they put new sound over it to make it sound like it’s real, when actually it’s just a sound effect.

Michelle: Cool yeah OK, and what about all those camera shots and things, are you interested in those?

Nimbus: Um, yes I like them, I found a really good website that tells you about all the different shots and all.. different types of

media and everything like that, it’s really interesting. And like who.. before this, someone mentioned to me er... or something... they just mentioned something like “oh that’s a really good establishing shot” and I was thinking “What?”

and it’s like... it’s like.. “Oh yeah, that was a quite good establishing shot actually, it really brought the tension into the moment”.

[Michelle sniggers]

Michelle: OK, excellent. And do you think you might look at TV programmes or adverts or films in a different kind of ..way?

Nimbus: Yes.

Michelle: In what way?

Nimbus: Like, I would... instead of just sitting back, relaxing, watch...watching it and let it all sink in and have the

information going out your ear ... erm...I would like.... endure [laughs] it you could say... and might think “OK, that’s an establishing shot” or for fun I could like count the pans or the close-ups or something like that. And in adverts, I like, sometimes I count how many times it changes between views.

Michelle: Mm, how many cuts... Yeah Yeah...

Nimbus: Yeah.

Michelle: Cos there’s a lot.

Nimbus: Yeah.

Michelle: Quite a lot in adverts, isn’t there?

Nimbus: Because adverts are usually fast, cos you know,..

yeah...yeah.. buy this, buy this!

(Interview with Nimbus, 2013)⁴⁵

A media practitioner’s core practices and values

Nimbus begins by affirming the social significance of Clip Club for him, albeit that at this point his peers are referred to distantly as ‘these people’, rather than the

45 For conference presentation purposes, I experimented with a videoed version of this interview with Nimbus standing silently, looking directly at the camera, ‘addressing’ the audience with a voiceover: http://theclipclub.co.uk/2013/03/20/points-of-view-1-nimbus/

[Accessed 8 November 2015]. I also videoed Leonardo using the same technique:

https://vimeo.com/127138677 [Accessed 8 November 2015]

friends they would become. As someone who spends hours at home on the computer, the fact of physical collaborative teamwork and the sharing of texts, are appealing features of the Club for him. Nimbus does not view himself as a ‘creative

collaborator’; his forte is solo computer programming and looking under the bonnet of digital technology, a set of skills he regards as separate from those related to

‘creativity’. Indeed the ironic inflection in his voice when describing ‘the tension of the moment’ signals that it feels odd for him to be alluding to ‘the evocative’, but somehow he recognises the importance.

Cinematic techniques for building tension and suspense had been the overarching theme for a few weeks and Nimbus had assimilated much of this new visual film grammar⁴⁶ - for example how certain sounds, camera shots, movements, angles and distances achieve the effects they do – with particular reference to a scene in Wall-E (Stanton 2008). As if to test out his imaginative capacity he whimsically projects himself into an imagined dialogue, in which he is called upon to make explicit his newfound knowledge on the merits of a particular establishing shot. Possessing knowledge is a marker of Nimbus’ identity; indeed ‘not knowing’ is a potential cause for shame in his reality.

Not having an immediate ‘real-life’ community with whom to share his knowledge of computer science, and finding a receptive one within Clip Club revealed to Nimbus sides of himself that had previously been in shadow. This discursive schism between informally acquired skills perceived as high value beyond school, and the dearth of outlets in which school children can formally practice them in school, all embroiled in illusory divisions between creative, academic and technical subjects, are apparent in one guise or another in this short exchange with Nimbus.

Practitioner insight: tools, iterative technique, dual contexts

Nimbus’s use of the word ‘ashamed’ indicates that either he has felt shame and/or that he has been sensitive to others’, on account of the perceived public failure at having got something wrong in class, or rather, for him, not having got something right first time. The ways in which digital filming and editing a) lessens the

46 http://theclipclub.co.uk/2013/02/05/7-tell-me-a-few-things-about-this-shot-in-a-comment/#comments [Accessed 21 September 2015]

likelihood for ‘mistakes’ to be felt as such, and b) recasts repeated attempts at

‘correction’ as pleasurable and sometimes irresistible processes of refinement, are a revelation for young learners. The benefits of informed and iterative redrafting as a key element of media composition was an important theme uncovered in my Masters dissertation (Cannon 2011⁴⁷). Furthermore, school systems condemn failure at all costs on account of academic achievement targets and prevailing competitive cultures. My data suggests that these priorities are parsed to the students with negative consequences. Nimbus in particular experiences the sweet dissonance of

‘failing well’ as he picks up on the intrinsic benefits of review and redraft processes so characteristic of creative media production.

As someone who is unusually alert to the possible continuities between the ‘home-life-world’ context and that of school, Nimbus revels in his insider knowledge about the artificiality of media constructs, alluding to texts with recorded sound other than the diegetic. In other words, you can cheat when film-making by removing the original recorded sound and by importing additional more evocative soundtracks and effects that artfully mesh with the content. This is useful information for him, the inference being that he would be able to implement this new knowledge quickly, not only in the Clip Club but also at home and with his friends. Activities at the Club inspired him to expand his ‘visual toolkit’ by independently researching camera shots, which links with a newly acquired critical perspective on audiovisual texts in his non-school life.