Journal #14

May 16, 2007

Monday morning we began to film the skits with the intent of finishing them. I brought the four videographers with me to get the cameras from the media aid center. Of these four students, three had said they have at least used video cameras in the past, but none of them were very comfortable with the cameras. The rest of their groups practiced lines and set up their scenes…still up until this point not everyone understood that we were going to be filming movies, but soon everyone got onto the same page. I gave the videopgraphers a short lesson on using the cameras and about camera editing. They were very excited to be working with this technology, but I felt especially responsible for making sure that they kept the cameras safe and in pristine condition. After this mini workshop, I sent them back to their groups to begin filming, using the storyboards they had made last session. The Pirate group was working hard to create their setting and almost ran out of time for their skit but they ended up finishing. The Principle group went through their filming very quickly. I asked them if they were fully satisfied with their work and after watching it, they decided that they wanted to do it again. Although the actors had memorized their lines, they did not employ different cuts in the filming as I had talked about as part of the original criteria. The Rapper group had trouble staying focused and getting organized, once they had finally set up their scene and started filming they only had time for filming a short clip. The Drug Dealer group, although they were working diligently the whole time, had technical difficulties and group work difficulties to overcome. About half way through the day I realized that I would need to come back for another day to finish the projects. The students were testing this week s they only time I could come back was Tuesday afternoon and luckily that worked with my schedule, so I went in again yesterday. I’m very glad that I added another day because the feeling on Monday was very rushed and therefore lacked closure and discussion.

Tuesday was much better (although the students were quite rambunctious because they had just sat through a day of testing). Now that the students knew exactly what they were doing, they just had to set up again and get to work on filming. The Pirate group and the Principal group had actually finished theirs on Monday, thankfully, because both groups were missing students. For the students in these two groups who were there, I asked them to conduct interviews and document what the other groups were doing. This gave them a sense of purpose and an embedded assessment, while at the same time helping me to gather data.

Even though the class was buzzing with energy, I think that for the most part this was focused energy and they were engaged in the project. This is evident from how group members pulled together to accomplish tasks, from the engagement of students like Reyna and Anahi who generally have lacked the desire to participate (or even come to class) in the past, and from talking to students about how this project helped the to understand Shakespearean text. I did have some time to interview students myself and I asked Joana, Konyko, and Jesus who they would like to show their video to. They said they think that every student reading Macbeth can benefit from seeing their work because it can help to connect the themes of the play to realities in their lives. This sense of agency that they gained from this project—the idea that they have the power to create and to teach others through their media, is the core of what my goal was from the beginning of my residency. The fact that they understood this and were able to articulate it has been one of the highlights of my ArtsBridge experience. Additionally, the joy that the students, Ms. Hamilton, and I got from creating and watching their work speaks volumes for the power and beauty of film. This goes above and beyond theater as it preserves the work of the students so it can be viewed and shared by others.

At the end of the class we talked as a class about the project—the difficulties and triumphs that students felt. One student noted how it was difficult using film because everything had to be planned out to the very last detail. The students are all eager to see their final projects and they kept asking me when I would be back. I will hopefully have all of the videos put onto a dvd by next week or the week after because I am eager to go back and spend more time with them as well and I would like to do a final wrap up and critique day. I feel like no matter what, I will never have enough time with these amazing students and I am incredibly sad that I will not be around next year. I hope to maintain strong ties with Kori at least and some of the students maybe so I can continue to be a link between them and UCLA, or just higher education in general.

Journal #13

May 11, 2007

This week we continued the Shakespeare video project. On Tuesday students decided on the settings for their adaptations of Macbeth. This stirred very good dialogue about positions of power within our communities. I sat with each group separately and brainstormed ideas with them. With each group, I asked them what position of power their Macbeth would be trying to attain. Would it be a police chief? a school principal? the president? We talked about why those positions are desirable and what it means to have power, as well as what Macbeth would do to get that power. One group decided to use a Pirates of the Caribbean theme as a way to connect the ideas of Macbeth to something that would be recieved by a popular audience. One group, whose scene involves the three witches making predictions about Macbeth, decided on making Macbeth an aspiring rapper who is told by some radio djs that he is going to become very famous. A third group, analyzing the system of power within their own neighborhood, is having Macbeth be a drug dealer trying to make his way to the top. The fourth group chose to use the high school as their setting and their Macbeth is a vice principal who wants to become the principal. Once they had settled their ideas, they began to write scripts based on knowledge from previous workshops about scriptwriting. The groups had to choose a director, a videographer, and a set designer as well as choose who will play which parts in their films. We discussed the different roles involved in the group and what everyone needed to do in order to make the films successful. They had all started their scripts by the end of the session, and Ms. Hamilton had them continue to work on them on Wednesday morning so they would be mostly done by Thursday when I went back in.

Unfortunately, they still had a lot to finish on Thursday morning, so I gave them a little bit of time to do that before we started our workshop on storyboarding. We talked about how a script goes from writing to video and how the creators make a storyboard to lay out the plan before beginning to film anything. I had them watch a scene from the Scotland, PA movie and point out close up versus wide angle shots and how each is used differently. Then the groups practiced their lines and made storyboards so that on monday morning they can begin filming right away. There were several students who really took to this activity of storyboarding--to no surprise it was the same students who were more comfortable working with visual art. Lourdes made a fantastic storyboard with reasoning behind her different wide angle and close up shots. Yessica, Kathy, and Valeria all worked together to create a clear outline for filming as well.

I am slightly worried about the time issue on Monday morning, because the students have testing on tuesday, and for most of this week, so if we don't finish on Monday then I might not be able to come back in until the following week. I think it is possible to finish if I have everything planned out ahead of time and make sure I really stick to the time limits that I give to the students.

From the enthusiasm of the students thus far, I am really excited to see the outcome, and i can already tell that this project is engaging them with a literature that may have seemed inaccessible to them before.

Journal #12

May 3, 2oo7

Today was the start of my second residency--this time I'm flying solo. I am doing an Interpreting Shakespeare workshop series as the 10th grade English students are reading Macbeth right now. The residency will be very short-just 5 sessions-because they are only working on this book for several weeks and because I want to make sure I have time to gather information and work on an analysis of both of the residencies. The session today went very smoothly. I gave a brief introduction to the residency and what we would be doing together, then we watched part of a modern version of Macbeth to get a sense for what they could do there skits about. Then they partnered up and looked at a short excerpt from act 1 (each partner group had different ones). They had to write down the Who? What? and Where? of the segment then perform it like they thought it would be performed in a Shakespearean play. Then I had them do the short dialogue over again in a new setting (drawn randomly from student-written suggestions). Some of these turned out to be very humorous--one group had to do their scene as if they were under a bed, and another had to pretend they were in a skating rink. I think today was successful based on the two goals that I had: 1) that the students fully understand the plot and main themes of Act 1 of Macbeth and 2) that the students start to think about using the plot and themes of Macbeth to make their own scenes and skits. Next session will be devoted to splitting up the groups and starting to write their versions of the scenes. I think it is going to be a very fun project to work on (for them as well as for me)! And when students are working with a difficult text like Shakespeare, fun is really important. We also had a good discussion about Macbeth's lust for power and how Lady Macbeth pursuades Macbeth to commit an evil act. This discussion was engaging, as students talked about why power is so important to have and what they would do for that kind of power. I think it was one of my most complete lesson plans thus far in terms of really hitting on all of the standards; I am really looking forward to seeing the creativity that will come from these talented students.