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Doorways, Windows, And Other BordersA number of places within the schools were found to be similar to the hallways and grounds in that they are relatively unconstrained and they take on a special significance for students, but they become places only for moments. They should more properly be considered spaces, the areas between places that are inevitably contested. They are very similar to student-owned places in that their institutional purposes do not dominate and frequently are unspecified, but there is no indication of a consistency in their uses beyond that of allowing access in one form or another to a place without actually entering it, but this access was used in many different ways. Doorways and windows figured most prominently in the Boarding High projects and particularly so in Wicket and Jerome’s project. Open doorways in particular played an important role: They were frequently occupied to enable interaction with people inside classrooms. Sometimes they moved passed the door but remained within the general area, indicating the transient nature of their activity. They took such a position several times to tease the students on the inside, ready to make a quick departure if a teacher raised an objection. They also used doorways to look for people they were friends with. The doors to buildings were recorded by Wicket as he and Jerome moved through them, becoming places to play with perspectives by rotating the camera and zooming in and out. Going through or even looking through doors often marked a transition between events. Being on the peripheries of places was also common but had a distinct impact on activities. Two of the interviews by the focal group at Urban High were done on the peripheries of classrooms, but these spaces were used in exactly the same way as the hallways and grounds were. Luke, on the other hand, in “The Good, the Bad, and the Techies,” was always on the edge of a place or in the space between places when he recorded. This may have been necessary to show the activity within places, but as shall be discussed in the section on this project at the end of the chapter, there were instances when the affordances of his location failed to serve his purposes, particularly given the difficulty of hearing someone speak in a busy classroom when using only the camera’s built-in microphone. Windows and closed doors with glass could not be occupied exactly, but they were used to gain visual access to places without actually entering. Most commonly, this act allowed the camera to show people without their awareness. One more satirical use of it appeared in “The Good, the Bad, and the Techies” from Suburban High: The door to the control room was closed directly in front of the camera in an act of pretending to shut it out, but the show of two students wrestling continued as the camera recorded through the window. More self-consciously, “Perspectives” from Boarding High (Project 16) used a window that had been blocked to reflect the production team, transforming it into a mirror to gain visual access to themselves. The meaning of such indirect access for the audience is demonstrated in Illustrations 10 and 11. The first set of images is from the drunk driving PSA by the focal group at Urban High (Project 9), and the second set of shots is also from a drunk driving piece from Suburban High (Project 4). Both projects make use of shots recorded from a variety of positions. They are shown in the order in which they occur, but poor lighting makes the images—particularly as stills—difficult to understand. The differences are particularly effective when the videos—with motion—are seen. The shots of the drivers taken from outside the vehicles contrast sharply with the ones in which the camera operator was positioned inside the cars. They also have influential height differences: The Urban High project shows the driver from above, creating power differences and a lack of solidarity, while the Suburban High project shows the driver from a level, almost lower, position, thus equalizing the power and decreasing the distancing effect of the glass. Being outside the car, even with the window open and particularly from above as in Still 3 in Illustration 10, creates a distance—a lack of intimacy with the driver that for the purposes of the projects allows the audience to simply observe. The shots taken inside the car (Illustration 10, Still 1, and Illustration 11, Stills 2 and 3), on the other hand, places the audience in the car. The effect of being beside the driver in the Suburban High piece communicates a greater sense of solidarity and equality, whereas being in the backseat in the Urban High project communicates a powerlessness and distance. If these projects were not as scripted and edited as they were and did not include such contradictory messages, these could be taken as indicating more about the relationships of the people involved. Video, unlike still photography, records responses of the “voyeur” who uses windows. This happened multiple times in the focal project from Boarding High and provides a hint of how students use the material environment even when they do not have a camera. In one noteworthy shot, Wicket and Jerome looked at two security officers through glass and make jokes. Wicket yells, "Stop us!" Jerome comments, "Trying to bust somebody." Wicket yells, "Stop us!" again and then continues, "We have no pass!" At the same time Jerome says, "Stop the hate crimes." See Illustration 12 for images from the shot. In different ways, they use the sound barrier between them and the security officers to make jokes about their relationship with them. It is in moments like this one that one potential of the video camera materializes that is particularly salient in defining the student-school relationship. I give this type of activity the term video graffiti. |
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