As Snapchat pictorial messaging supersedes text messaging in our students’ lives, and image memes become par for the discursive course in processing the spectrum of current events on social media, visual communication extends beyond the study of the visual arts to everyday media consumption and interpersonal communication alike. This presentation will detail a classroom activity that utilizes analysis and reproduction of basic film techniques to refine visual literacy skills, reviewing pertinent pedagogical and theoretical foundations.
When introducing students to media literacy, an initial roadblock is often helping them to recognize production decisions as anything other than inevitable. Students tend to have a difficult time recognizing choices as both intentional and one of many options the media-maker may have selected. Under the direction of the instructor, students are introduced to a variety of filming techniques and then conceptualize and produce alternative techniques, allowing students to actively engage with the material and analyze its consequences.
Using The Jacob Burns Film Center’s online “Visual Glossary,” the in-class activity outlined in this presentation utilizes a vivid, user-friendly archive of short film clips and brief descriptions of filming techniques to allow students to identify, replicate, and comparatively evaluate both the techniques and possible viewer inferences, employing and strengthening critical skills. This activity is manageable for beginning-level communication students and requires only the online film resource and a smartphone. The activity and its directed discussion and analysis strengthen rhetorical agency as students construct and articulate a visual argument, allowing for formative assessment of both the language of film and broader visual literacy.
About the presenterHolly Avella
Teaches communication and media studies at Manhattanville College.