W IZARD

See Clip 2 - Corridor shoot with Clone Clara

Michelle-Cannon-phd-movie-data.mp4 at 00:18’ on the DVD, or the same here:

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

Examination of the ‘corridor shoot’ is an appropriate point at which to introduce Wizard. He was a sensitive boy with a complicated home life, prone to dissolve into tears if things did not go his way. At the same time he was a confident artist, actor

52 The post displays G-man’s strong photographic skill and also demonstrates the use of the Evernote app to wirelessly manage the shot list: http://theclipclub.co.uk/2014/04/11/serious-shooting-earnest-editing/ [Accessed 21 September 2015]

Figure 16: Clip Club corridor shoot behind camera. Still from video clip.

and dancer: he loved being in front of the camera and could rarely keep still. His interest lay in what it was possible to evoke dramatically, physically and pictorially, and he found his expressive space in graphic art and rhetorical performance.

Multimodal craftsmanship

It is Wizard’s turn to direct this scene (left, in Figure 16) and the photo shows him immersed in the moment and, acting on impulse surrounded by ‘his crew’, he performs an impish dramatic gesture behind the camera at 00:29’, mirroring the gothic tone of the take. He then switches from a playful and ‘evocative’ mode to executive directorial mode, as the needs of the moment dictate, slipping into the industrial vernacular: ‘Cut!’. This ability to switch between modes on the fly, is a useful skill in creative practice and one which might start to be conceived as integral to media composition practices and the reframing of literacy.

This study argues that in traditional modes of composition, such as writing, we learn to see-saw between two particular modes: the abstract conception of an intended meaning and – with varying levels of skill and articulacy - its graphic transcription performed largely in isolation. Film-making is an alternative ‘writing’ stage that operates with inclusive, social and embodied practices with no loss of sophisticated

intellectual investment. Wizard is able to act out his intended meaning and then

‘transcribe’ it immediately in film.

Practitioner insight: the affective, corporeal and imaginary

In this extract we feel the co-presence of the children and witness them attending intently to a joint imagined vision. Wizard’s expressive sensibility illustrates for us what that vision is through gesture, and then, through visceral teamwork they bring that meaning to life in ways that may be beyond them in traditional meaning-making practices with language.

Having completed their respective tasks with a unity of aesthetic intention, they clap and congratulate themselves on getting the shot they wanted: the full stop of the ‘film sentence’ (BFI 2012, Donaldson 2014, a metaphor attributable to UK film director Anthony Minghella, which will be extrapolated later). The familiar ‘post-successful-take’ release of tension was a culmination of artistry as referenced in my model in Figure 12. The scene’s shooting problems had been overcome and a ‘rightness of fit’

had squeezed through. By this I mean that the assembly of affective, corporeal and imaginative relations within the design of their shot had finally coalesced into a satisfying reproducible form.

The pedagogic principle at play in this scenario relates not only to being hands-off, but absent for a long period, so that textured independent exploration could be done, mistakes made, ownership tested, shots re-taken and ‘failure’ better unravelled. If I had been present for longer on this shot the climactic tension may not have been so intense, as I would have been keen to be moving swiftly through the shot list. This was a salutary learning curve, which brought home the function of trust and patience in ethnographic, pedagogic and mediating roles, in contrast with the sometimes authoritarian offices of an ‘expert’ practitioner, an omnipresent teacher or intervening participant-researcher.

See Clip 3 – Wizard filming on table

Michelle-Cannon-phd-movie-data.mp4 at 01:07’ on the DVD, or the same here:

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

Media crafting and the film sentence

In the weeks prior to the corridor shoot, Wizard had found still other ways of recruiting movement and the corporeal into his performative palette by embracing the point of view shot, and conjoining the roles of camera operator with some evil presence. After watching the short film He Dies At The End (McCarthy 2010) I had

Figure 17: Leonardo and Wizard on the table practicing suspense shots

asked the group to practice different types of shots to maximise suspense. Wizard’s two friends were absent from this session and it was unusual for him to be working with Leonardo whom he routinely ignored. Nonetheless, inspired by the short film and emboldened by his friends’ absence, Wizard stepped up as camera operator in a way that had been eluding him. Forming an alliance with the camera, he assumed the role of the ‘monster’ and climbed onto the table for maximum domination effect.

With an imaginative leap he was translating his new item of film ‘vocabulary’, the point of view shot, into a short embodied moving image form, or perhaps, a ‘filmic phrase’ (an analogy which will be unpacked in Chapter VI). For some, film-making

is perhaps felt as ‘story-dwelling’ as much as story-telling, in terms of its bodily investment.

Practitioner insight: technique and iterative practices

The point of view shot was first introduced to the children in a short ‘dark’

animation, Alma (2009), which was analysed in some depth. It was then put into practice in Run School Run 1! (where G-man’s camera work had assumed the guise of the Clone approaching her ‘victims’) and it was noticed again in He Dies at the End (McCarthy 2010). Wizard’s table-top shoot sees him practising the shot and we witness a sophisticated series of film techniques: he establishes the scene with a wide shot, steadily pans round the space, slowly closes in from a high angle, and finishes with an extreme close up of the victim and a disembodied voice-over familiar to the horror genre.

I chose this clip to demonstrate the relatively sophisticated sequence of filming technique born out of implicit knowledge made explicit through the iterative

Figure 18: Clone Clara's home inside the computer, green screen backdrop drawn by Wizard. Original source:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-65322190/stock-photo-inside-the-computer-macro-image-of-a-computer-cpu.html [Accessed 21 September 2015]

processes of watching, analysing, discussing, practicing and making short clips.

Some may construe that Wizard’s everyday artistry might be achievable through regular informal consumption of certain texts, however, one of the fundamental findings of this study was the need for the minutiae of film language to surface, be noticed, acknowledged, experimented with, and their impact explicitly discussed.

There will always be another way, another angle from which to tell a story, another route to the ‘rightness of fit’, it is a question of understanding qualitative relations and the clarity and boldness of one’s intentions – all of which I believe are

demonstrated in Wizard’s clip.

Material and digital connectivity

As might be recalled in Chapter III’s account of the mini ‘BAFTA experience’, media composition work is not exclusively digital in nature, Wizard enjoyed drawing and intertextual practices that meld the analogue with the digital. We needed a backdrop to represent Clone Clara’s ‘home’ in the closing scene of Run School Run2! and an image search resulted in the above drawing in Figure 18. It also

featured as the cover design of the DVD they all took home as a tangible memento of their Clip Club experience. There was value in offering the children a physical artefact to take home and I noticed how G-man in particular kept hold of his in the playground and in the stairwell outside his classroom, (where he was often sent to

‘reflect on his behaviour’). ‘Retro’ as it might be, the DVD and its case functioned as a portable material embodiment of their co-designed production; the implication being that for some, concrete embodiments of the virtual can enhance positive feelings of pride, ownership and identity.

Practitioner insight: intertextual remix

The fluid textual translations between digital and analogue texts, software, hardware, digital platforms and material artefacts is indicative of literacy practices in a constant state of flux. Indeed the idea of re-creating a ‘home’ inside a computer came from watching a short Swiss animation, Animatou (2007), in which an animated cat finds refuge in the three-dimensional innards of the CPU - we used this as inspiration to conclude the film. It is argued here that a wider conception of literacy is cognisant of strategies that ‘purloin’ from discourse, adapting and remixing textual codes and conventions using different media for specific purposes. Wizard was not only a director, an actor and a camera operator, but a graphic artist and set designer too. The

more these roles and production processes can be explicitly revealed, experienced and valued, the more moving image literacy can be regarded as a multi-faceted social and participative literacy practice with relevance both inside and beyond the school gates.