The Media Spot

Summer 2009 at GSS brought together a fantastic team of educator and youth collaborators for 7 video production workshops emphasizing the core principles of media literacy education. The workshops were broken up into 2 genre study and production sequences: Music Videos, and Movie Trailers.

Middle school students watched examples of each genre, came up with authentic definitions of what defined each, then scripted, storyboarded, shot and edited their own videos in small groups. The resulting video productions are included in Voicethread.com presentations (below), and are available to the public as a "living" digital record of our experiences, and a model for educators that remains open to additional online commentary and discussion.

As always, the videos were screened for parents, campers and staff at the GSS summer wrap-up extravaganza alongside live dancing and dramatic skits from the K-8 campers.

Special thanks to TMS collaborators: media literacy educator Brian Smith, local documentary filmmaker Jacqueline Arias, and TMS interns Caitlin Nagle and Kate Rosenbloom, Ed.M. candidates at Columbia Teachers College Communication, Computing, and Technology in Education , our link to PVK in Philly, Henry Cohn-Geltner, and once again GSS staff member Rodolfo Mills for bringing their creative energy, planning, and skill working with kids to make this experience so robust!

Music Video Production Process
After watching and discussing examples of music videos, the participants listened to a few songs with their eyes closed and the lights out, focusing on mental imagery inspired by the sounds and lyrics. We shared our visions and ideas, then chose the song that we felt had the most potential to adapt into a video. Our focus throughout this process was on how different people from different locations have different points of view as audiences and producers. To create teachable moments around this theme, we split into two groups to produce two separate videos. We also posted our "rough cuts" to the internet using Voicethread.com where we got some feedback from fifth grade students in a Philadelphia-based a media literacy camp, Powerful Voices for Kids, at Temple University's Media Education Lab, as well as our own team of collaborators. We completed and posted our final cuts back to Voicethread, where they can be viewed and commented on along with artifacts from our entire production experience (see below).

Watch "Music Video Production" FULL SCREEN at Voicethread.com

Movie Trailer Production Process
The structure was the same for our trailers (a.k.a. 'previews'), but adjusted for the genre. After identifying what makes a trailer good, students broke into small groups to storyboard dramatic moments from imagined movies that would warrant being in a trailer. Students produced their moments, then were re-grouped at editing stations to produce trailers for imaginary movies using the most dramatic and compelling clips the whole group had created. By adding music, titles and effects to their clips, students were able to put together some pretty dramatic trailers for believable stories. As a side note, the subject matter they went with provided a lot of potential for discussion of mass media content, and its affect on kids. Our discussions during production brought out some interesting threads that are waiting for the educational community to pick up and continue on Voicethread.com. Sign up for a free account, and get started below!

Watch "Movie Trailer Production" FULL SCREEN at Voicethread.com