For your third creative exploration, you will be exploring how film and television depict culture and identity – and how you can critique, reimagine, or explore these depictions through transformative remix.
On October 18, we will spend the day in class learning the basics of Adobe Premiere in a remix practicum. The focus of this creative exploration is not just learning the tools, though – our goal is to develop the skill to make (and understand) arguments expressed through the juxtaposition of familiar sounds, images, and the feelings they invoke. We will use a media text we have all viewed – the film Born in Flames – to experiment with the process of creating video remix. Though we will all share the same video footage, you will be responsible for your own audio, so bring a sound file (most likely a song, but it can be something else if you like) that you would like to work with. If you don’t have Adobe Premiere installed on a laptop of your own, you can use the Lab computers.
After our workshop, you will come up with a remix video idea of your own, which should be connected in some way to our discussions of marginalized perspectives in media and culture. However, you do not have to actually make this video. You may complete it as your final project if you wish!
Your submission for this creative exploration will be a reflection on your idea, which you will post on the blog.
In your reflection, include the following elements:
- Your focus. What will your video’s argument be? It doesn’t have to be a straightforward argument that you can encapsulate in a sentence – perhaps you want to highlight a particular perspective or inspire a particular feeling in your audience. Explain why you chose this focus and how it relates to class.
- Your visual source. Which film, television show, or other media will you be drawing from? Which characters, tropes, places, issues within that source? Include images so that we can see what you’re talking about. Explain why you chose this source.
- Your audio source. How will music/sound help you to make your point?
- Your structure. How would you bring these sounds and images together to make your point? I don’t expect you to have an entire storyboard, but I do want you to be able to tell me how you imagine the beginning, middle, and end of our video, including a few particular sound/image matches that you have imagined. If you’re more of a hands-on thinker, you might find it helpful to fire up Premiere and create a rough timeline in order to think this through.
- Your process. If you were to finish this video, where would you go from here? What are some of the challenges that you imagine you might face? How might you go about overcoming them?
Write at least 800 words. This creative exploration is due on the blog on October 21.