Just got back from viewing some film clips that were put together by a small group of high school students in a project offered by Tunxis Community College in furthering efforts of learning different cultures. Funded by a special grant, the six-hour a day, five days a week, three-week course involved both the introduction to the Mandarin language and to new media methods.
Under the guidance of two of the New Media instructors (a course I’ve taken there), Steve Ersinghaus and John Timmons, each student produced about a minute of audio reading that ran alongside photo story and enhanced often by background music, all geared to answer a quick Who am I? Two groups of five students each worked together as a team to produce a similar Who are We? three-minute segment. Both gave some insight not only into the individuals themselves, but would serve as an introduction to a nice cross section of the American high school student to students in China. The entire China project is shaping itself as a start to foreign exchange programs that would ease, I’m sure, the exchange by no doubt revealing the similarities in youths beyond their cultural differences.
For me personally, it poked me once more with the possibilities of new media and story. During the individual pieces, I attempted to separate out the verbal story that I heard read by the student from the visual photos of family and friends (movie clips too!) and realized just how well, together with the music background, they all worked to make it a more engrossing experience. Some of the writing was exceptional, all was very good. But taken as a written/read composition, I don’t think they would have been as powerful as the presentation as a multisensory event. This tells me to get on the stick about learning the software I need that I’ve just been diddling around with so far. It’s a whole new world and can produce something totally different than text story alone.
Very, very nice work, done mostly in Adobe Premier, with direction and help from the college Media people.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
So are you writing these days or just commenting on others?
OUCH!
I know, I know. I never finished “Cholera.”
Now you see, Mark, that’s what happens when you try to pretend you’ve been reading Spinning and you haven’t. Just a few posts down I wrote about submitting a story that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks–and have posted about.