JCMS Teaching Dossier Vol 5 (3)
Not Another Brick in the Wall: The Audiovisual Essay and Radical Pedagogy
Sian Mitchell
As media educators are coming to understand, through developing scholarship, audiovisual essays enable the integration of theory and practice in the learning environment. In the context of tertiary, practice-based film schools, the merging of theory and practice is integral for students to understand and experience their craft, so they may find practical value in exploring and applying film studies concepts while also developing much needed critical skills. Due to the perception of film studies as something film scholars, not practitioners, “do” (Myer 2012, 3), student practitioners sometimes eschew the analysis of cinema for their own practical projects. However, the audiovisual essay provides a means to illustrate the important relationship between film studies and practice, so the two aren’t seen as separate areas but instead, work together to help inform the creation of more challenging and meaningful films. Moreover, in making audiovisual essays, student practitioners have an opportunity for reflective practice through their exposure to the communicative possibilities of film language and the potential socio-cultural impact they can make with their own film storytelling. In this paper, I outline the role of the audiovisual essay in a film studies module I deliver to students enrolled in a practice-based degree program at SAE Creative Media Institute (SAE) Australia, with the aim of bridging this perceived gap between film studies and practice. It is specifically the inclusion of reflection in this assessment that makes the process of creating audiovisual essays both meaningful and empowering for the student practitioner.
Ben Goldsmith and Tom O’Regan (2013) have charted the different kinds of film school models in Australia, both public such as the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS, the national film school) and private such as SAE, and examined how these models represent a range of pedagogical approaches towards the training of emerging filmmakers. These approaches include an emphasis on providing either specialist (concentration on above- or below-the-line creative and technical film roles) or generalist (multi-skilling) training; industry-oriented approaches versus an auteurist/film-as-art model; providing a traditional syllabus that includes units on film theory and history or a modern approach that is responsive in its integration of the latest technological and pedagogical developments. However, for most film school models, the question of how these film schools “balance the practical and theoretical components of film education” (Goldsmith and O’Regan 2013, 153) is of concern. In their study, SAE is considered as industry-oriented, generalist and modern in its approach, implying a privileging of practice over theory. But what effect does this have for the student practitioner in relation to the development of integral screen literacy and critical thinking skills? and how can such skills inform the quality of students’ practice?
Clive Myer (2012) argues that the practice/theory divide has a detrimental impact on student filmmakers where they run the risk of making derivative and uninspiring films. He poses the question, “Are they challenging audiences, extending the language of practice and raising issues both social and aesthetic?” (2012, 2). Myer’s questions suggest the integral role practice-based film schools play in provoking their students to consider their films as socio-cultural artefacts. For student filmmakers undertaking practice-based film education, the audiovisual essay can provide a means for them to interrogate different kinds, styles and genres of films while challenging them to make critical connections between film practice and the socio-cultural and aesthetic impact of their work.
The making of audiovisual essays invites students to uncover and analyse the specific mechanisms and relationships of film structures used to engage audiences on emotional and cognitive levels that may have further socio-cultural impact. Catalin Brylla’s work on content analysis in the context of film education reveals how critical and reflective approaches in audiovisual essay production assists student awareness of these mechanisms. These benefits include
the potential to challenge or reduce social stereotypes, the ability to achieve greater originality through the avoidance of clichés, and the purposeful use of tropes/clichés/stock characters to streamline narrative exposition, intertextually stimulate spectators or persuade a target audience to adopt a particular attitude or behaviour (Brylla 2018, 151).
By asking them to analyse the content of films so as to become aware of how they function, students also reflect on their own preferences and responses to them. This enables a consideration of the impact that content can have. In identifying and uncovering the language that creates representations such as harmful social stereotypes, students can learn to avoid “re-presenting” them in their own films. Activities of analysis and reflection therefore become part of the process for student filmmakers in the creation of audiovisual essays, in the hope that this awareness is translated and integrated into their film practice. This point will be discussed further in the context of SAE Creative Media Institute’s film studies module and the design of its audiovisual essay assessment.
The audiovisual essay at SAE
At SAE, the audiovisual essay is an assessment for film students in trimester two of their Bachelor of Film Production program. It has been an assessment since 2013 when studio-style modules were introduced in a new degree which enhanced the practical nature of the program. The modules were designed to iteratively advance the students’ filmmaking skills as they worked towards their final capstone productions. The film studies module runs each trimester with a new cohort sized anywhere from ten (mid-year intakes of alternative entry and mature age students) to sixty (the February intake of secondary school leavers). These students have already completed practice-based foundational modules in screenwriting, cinematography and editing, and a module introducing critical thinking and communication in creative media. Therefore, students come to film studies equipped with the basic skills needed for audiovisual essay making. The early weeks of the film studies syllabus revises and extends on the elements of film language previously experienced in trimester one modules but through the dual lenses of authorship and audience. The students are therefore asked to consider how they can communicate their stories through film language and how their stories can impact their audiences, by analysing the work of established filmmakers.
The assessment brief asks students to create a ten-minute audiovisual essay that analyses how film language is used to communicate subtext in a film of their choice. Subtext was chosen as the focus so that students can begin to consciously recognise how films communicate something more about the world beyond the level of plot, or as filmmaker Alex Buono (Film Riot 2017) suggests, “a film without subtext is meaningless.” As with a traditional essay, in the design of the subtext audiovisual essay, students need to make a clear argument detailing the film’s subtextual message as they see it, a methodology for analysis (textual/content analysis), and incorporate appropriate research as support (Hinck 2013). Through this process, students are exercising key critical thinking skills, research and analysis, but within the familiarity of their practice—choosing and sequencing clips, creating their argument through montage techniques and narration, and illustrating their points with examples and support. What becomes crucial for these students, however, is reflecting on this process. With the current iteration of SAE’s film studies module, reflection takes place in a more informal way through in-class discussion once the essays are completed. In future module development, however, reflection will be formalised through the inclusion of supporting documentation, such as journal entries, detailing the student’s key learnings and insights for their future practice.
Audiovisual essays as reflective practice
By incorporating reflection as part of the audiovisual essay making process, film students can “glean useful narrative or visual elements from existing films and use precedents to develop and communicate the vision for their projects” (Schoenfeld 2010). Reflection empowers student practitioners to actively close the gap between theory and practice for themselves and reiterates that film practice requires both critical and creative skills. In this context reflection also places the student’s experience of creating the audiovisual essay at the centre of their learning and underpins the development of their practice.
Informally, SAE students have provided anecdotal feedback in class discussions on the usefulness of the audiovisual essay for their filmmaking practice. For example, one mature age student from a 2018 cohort noted that the process made them explore the film’s meaning beyond the levels of plot and dialogue, stating, “it’s made me more conscious of the subtle techniques like the soundtrack, the lighting, the cinematography [that] I would definitely have missed. It’s now a wider scope to look at subtext.” Another student from that group commented:
When I go and look with that [critical] eye, it makes a huge difference…it wasn’t until I looked at the mise-en-scène, that’s why [the film’s theme] is “divinity” and then how the cinematography and the music amplify that.
Here we can see the beginnings of student filmmakers engaging more critically with the craft of filmmaking to communicate further meaning. The next stage in this assessment is to develop a more rigorous reflective component and a method for tracking whether these new skills and knowledge are having an impact on both the kinds and quality of films produced by SAE students. At this stage it is only speculative, but it is hoped that the audiovisual essay contributes to the challenging of reductive stereotypes with more diverse socio-cultural representations, as well as increasing the aesthetic quality, in the films produced throughout the degree.
Not only does the audiovisual essay close the gap between theory and practice, it also emboldens filmmaking students to become more critical and self-aware practitioners. By placing their experience of films as both filmmakers and spectators at the centre of their learning, student practitioners can better understand the communicative ability and audience impact of their craft. Ultimately, we want our future filmmakers to feel empowered to make interesting, creative, challenging, and more meaningful cinema reflecting a diversity of representations, and the audiovisual essay offers student practitioners a way of developing this potential.
References
Brylla, Catalin. 2018. “The benefits of content analysis for filmmakers.” Studies in Australasian Cinema, 12, (2-3): 150-161. https://doi: 10.1080/17503175.2018.1540097
Film Riot. 2017. “Add Depth to Your Film Using Visual Subtext” Uploaded August 19, 2017. Video, 14:32. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I8MRE47Hv4
Goldsmith, Ben. and Tom O’Regan. 2013. “Beyond the Modular Film School: Australia Film and Television Schools and their Digital Transitions.” The Education of the Filmmaker in Europe, Australia and Asia, edited by Mette Hjort, 149-163. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hinck, Ashley. 2013. “Framing the Video Essay as Argument.” Cinema Journal: The Journal of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies, 1, no. 2 (Spring/Summer). http://teachingmedia.org/framing-the-video-essay-as-argument/
Myer, Clive. 2012. “Introduction.” Critical cinema: Beyond the theory of practice, edited by Clive Myer, 1-8, New York: Columbia University Press.
Schoenfeld, Carl. 2010. “The Troubles of trying to explain an Economic Art: Implementing Reflective Film Analysis.” Paper presented at the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Conference 2010, London, UK. http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/events/MeCCSA/pdf/papers/Schoenfeld%20Reflective_Film_AnalysisMeCCSA.pdf
Sian Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer at SAE Creative Media Institute and Festival Director of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. Her research interests include contemporary and historical screen exhibition, Australian women’s screen practice and audience engagement. Her work has appeared in Historic Environment, Peephole Journal, the National Film and Sound Archive, and AFI Research Collection.
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