Reflections from the Artist

Kettering Media Residency – Spring 2013

My experience as a Media Artist in Kettering, with Rosewood and Fairmont High School was nothing short of eye opening.  I have glimpsed the future of media arts in the region.

Juniors at Fairmont High School’s Interactive Media Program, along with their teacher Laura Hutchins, Rosewood’s Shayna McConville, and I met once a week for 10 weeks, skipping a week occasionally and for school’s spring break, and doubling up once.  So we took a two-week (10 day residency) and stretched it across a period from January – May.

Between meetings, the participants worked on their own.  When we reconvened, they had advanced their projects, and we kept pushing forward.

It’s clear that this allowed us to complete a larger body of work than if we had tried to work on one project together for two straight weeks; or if we had split up and competed for equipment within two weeks.  This way, almost a dozen youth were able to stretch their wings and really take control of either a whole project or an aspect (such as animation) of a project.

As importantly, the participants were able to reflect, evaluate, and revise their projects in a way that approaches a mature process. They were able to learn from each other and from their own growing set of criteria.

We produced the five short films that are part of the Uncovering Kettering series through these five basic steps:

1. Training

• Listening
• Viewing
• Dissecting, Analyzing
• Improvisation to relax in front and behind the camera
• Approaches to camera set-up for interviews and verite’

2. Brainstorming

• Pitching
• Discussing possible stories, characters in the past and present
• Storyboarding, potential sketches, discarding. . .
• And finally, settling on a concept: a collection of short films about hidden stories within Fairmont High School

3. Planning Approaches/Concepts

• Anticipating heart of story – light research
• Possible storytelling approaches, ways of shooting, editing
• Seeking the unexpected and unknown
• Forming teams
• Asking permission
• Scheduling shoot with subject, equipment, and crew

4. Execution

• Shooting
• Editing

5. Revising

• Soliciting feedback
• Re-visioning
• Fine cutting

Takeaways for Me

High-achieving school students are busy and in a pressure-cooker, yet they love it. Blowing off steam in fun, creative ways is a good idea.

High school students are sharp and perceptive – they got more out of my work-in-progress than some adults; they noticed different things.

Just because students have access to an unbelievable technical education, the lessons that come from art are subtle and take longer to learn.   More so, when technical power is given to youth, it is responsible to offer artistic tools, as well.

The basics always need to be introduced and/or reinforced.

High school students can like and respect their teachers!  They seem to understand a certain depth about their teachers, more than these adults may realize.  And perhaps because this challenge was to bring out depth, they gravitated to individuals who embodied certain traits.

I learned a lot from the way Fairmont High School Interactive Media teacher Laura Hutchins structure her class.  I especially like her method of encouraging the students to put time into the multitude of real projects, and to report on them.  She uses “production points” and “invoices,” which teaches them the responsibility, pride, and rewards of work.

How Laura keeps so many projects going and keeps track of the students’ work is nothing short of miraculous.  She is firm and kind, and they love her.

Possible Takeaways for Participants

I think the techniques that may have had the most impact on the students were:

• Storytelling in the 1^st person through the editing of an interview
• Approaches to interviewing to bring out character, emotion, and uncertainty
• The importance of silence, or pauses in editing
• Uses of creative structures, timing, and light animation for humor
• Introduction to sound editing
• The concept of fine cutting
• How slowing down the shooting process with lighting, planning framing, etc. can often produce better quality images better than “run and gun”
• Working as one person vs. several on a crew
• Framing for cutting between focal lengths
• How to create shallow depth of field with deep background

How this Residency was Unique

• This residency was different in that when we started, the participants already had a level of competency in operating cameras and editing, and so the mission was to raise levels through an artistic challenge.  The challenge was to tell stories that were hidden in Kettering.  Although they could have chosen anything in the town that intrigued them, including a documentary set in the past, they all chose to make short punchy films about a hidden story that emerged from teachers in the school.
• The residency was also different because it was one of the few where we did not have to worry about where to get cameras and editing software. It was all there.
• So the participants had varying levels of skill in media production, and so it was more a matter of introducing new skills and raising the level through coaching and motivating.  And yet, there were still some basic artistic and even technical skills that had to be reviewed, as is common in all the arts.

How Kettering Stories Concept Changed

In the beginning, dialogue with adults about potential media projects focused on Kettering’s amazing physical and architectural characteristics.  The town’s heroes seemed to be elderly folk or historical characters.

When teenagers got involved – and key to the process is they must own the idea, they saw living heroes every day in their classrooms.

We discussed this at length, and Shayna agreed that the stories of these teachers were valid as part of Uncovering Kettering.

Perhaps what this reinforced for us is that indeed, stories are everywhere.  It just comes down to how you tell it: the approach and artistic process.

Finally, when we did begin work on a short film at Rosewood about mature artist, Phoebe Gaughn, all the lesson of the previous eight weeks seemed to fall into place, and I believe the team created a gorgeous piece under the direction of Shayna!

It especially pleases me that Shayna has tools and skills that she can continue to practice to be able to add media making as a part of Rosewood’s practice; and that she has a relationship with the Interactive Media department at Fairmont.

Thank You

It was a complete privilege to be able to collaborate with the curious, talented, and challenging juniors at Fairmont’s Interactive Media Program, their sharp leader Laura Hutchins, and the reliably upbeat Shaya McConville.  I hope they grew as much as I did.  THANK YOU!!!!  Let’s show these movies!