Location

Location, Location, Location!

Professional moviemakers fly to exotic locations around the world for a few seconds of footage and record many scenes in elaborate studios to control as many of the elements as possible. High school students of video production do not have these kinds of resources. Nevertheless, they have a certain amount of freedom in where they choose to record their projects. A zone, as in the ZPD, ZFM, and ZPA discussed in Chapter 1, is a metaphorical place—an abstract area corresponding to certain activities—but they can frequently be mapped onto real places and supported by the material environment. The environment is composed of many overlapping “places” with boundaries that can be solid or that can shift with the activity. The aim is to consider which of these places become meaningful and visible in student video production.

Worth and Adair (1972) sought culture in the films they studied, and they noted the role of location:

Theoretically, a film can be photographed anywhere, limited only by the time and money available. We do not instruct our students in any way regarding the geographical location and setting of their film. They can go anywhere they want to. Where they go and what they do shoot, however, is extremely significant. After reviewing film productions made by different groups, a pattern of preferred and proscribed settings emerges. (p. 238)

They found that the Navajo tended to film near their homes while middle-class, graduate students and white, middle-class teenagers filmed in places that were both new to them and faraway from their homes. Black, lower-class teenagers, on the other hand, stayed near their homes during practice—going to such places as basketball courts and vacant lots—and then going to more remote places or altering places through sets for their final projects (p. 238).

The differences they observed provoke the question as to whether video programs might show similar differences. Of course, the school-based programs would be likely to afford fewer options than the courses Worth and Adair were associated with, but programs were selected with a requirement that some choice of location be available to students; some courses are entirely about studio work. As in previously discussed issues, the videos were highly reflective of the contexts in which they were produced, in particular the assignments and selected topics. The evidence suggests that perhaps the ethnic differences in location observed by Worth and Adair were as much a result of context as they were culture.

Boarding High presented a unique setting most obviously in the fact that students lived on campus. That with the absence of constraints led to students going everywhere on the campus. All students had some shots outside on the grounds. This was heavily influenced by the fact that the door students used to the Art classroom led outside; the door leading further into the building was almost never used. All the groups in the second course went into the Academic Building and wandered the halls. In the third course, when the college interns accompanied them, they did much less wandering, though at least one of the groups went into the Academic Building. One group, the one composed entirely of girls and with a female intern, also went to the students’ dormitory. More visits to dormitories were limited by mixed gendered groups, but the buildings’ more distant positions, students being from different houses, and possibly negative feelings toward the places contributed to the fact that no other groups went there either. The one video that was about dormitory life had a distinctly negative message about them, which was supported by the comments of one of its producers, giving further evidence that the sentiment about dormitories was negative. In sum, these videos showed all aspects of the school and its grounds, including academic classrooms, music classrooms, and the ground’s perimeters.

By contrast, the Suburban High videos showed absolutely no classrooms other than the Television Production classroom nor the perimeters of the school grounds. The outside areas between buildings were a regular place sought for practice and projects in which a nondescript background was desired. The news program frequently used brick walls as neutral backgrounds when they shot interviews outside the television classroom. They occasionally showed clips from athletic events or a performance, but no videos for the show, the video yearbook, or a beginning class that was observed showed the insides of a classroom or office, the cooking demonstration being the only exception. Numerous videos were shot away from school. The lack of classrooms and offices can be attributed partly to the lack of exploratory videos, but as discussed in Chapter Two, this can also be associated with the disconnect between the program and academics more generally. The peripheries were not shown primarily because they are not visible from the main campus; buildings and trees hide them. The closest students came was in recording car-oriented projects in the student parking lot.

Urban High had slightly more use of classrooms and peripheries. The peripheries were unavoidable in projects shot outside, but only the focal project used classrooms other than those where the courses met. Another project—a news item—was about the college center and so was recorded there, but classrooms were otherwise absent. The locations at both Urban and Suburban Highs were selected more to match the topics of their projects, not having greater freedom to explore. When students were able to record away from school, they frequently chose this option. The course classrooms were used more often because they afforded rearrangement and appropriate furniture for sets. Locations seem to have been selected for very clear purposes.

The pilot data, however, suggested that the choice of location might relate to developmental issues: that students sought student-owned places before venturing into places “owned” by others. It was hypothesized that places with fewer constraints or that in some sense were the places where student culture dominated were comparable to the third spaces discussed by Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Tejada (1999), metaphorical places where hybrid languages—or in this case, hybrid video uses—could be created that combined the students’ “language” with that of the program. The students’ experiences as consumers of video and perhaps in using video in other contexts would theoretically form a hybrid with what was being taught in students’ initiative to create their own third spaces. The question, then, was whether changes in locations would serve as indications of developmental changes or more simply that they would reflect changes in the contexts and purposes of production.

Other research contributed little. The only change over time that Worth and Adair (1972) noted was among black, lower-class adolescents. The movement was from places where the adolescents frequently gathered without adults—described as places near their homes such as vacant lots and basketball courts where they can be expected to have experienced few constraints and expectations—to either less familiar or reconstructed places—places more likely to be owned by someone else. They additionally describe these changes in location as corresponding to the shift from practice to final projects (p.238), further confounding potential development with a change in purpose, as in shift from exploration to purposeful recording.

The general work at Suburban High followed this basic pattern: For the early shots of specific techniques, groups of students sought neutral places between buildings, what could easily be considered student-owned places. Then for their two projects, the locations they chose were specific to what they decided to do and what was available. Quality projects were recorded both on campus and off campus, though there were some indications that projects recorded off campus required a greater commitment. There was one significant indication that the choice of location for practice shots was influenced by developmental issues: Their first recordings were done in as much isolation as possible; each group occupied a different area with buildings blocking their view of one another. In later projects, they increasingly stayed closer to the classroom and in closer proximity to one another. An alternative explanation, however, is that the novel freedom of movement afforded by video work led to students wanting to travel farther, staying nearer when the novelty had worn off.

The first project by beginning students at Urban High found all students again in the student-dominated areas of hallways, stairwells, and grounds. All but one of the projects also involved some kind of chase, apparently being a basic way to show tension, climax, and resolution without sound as was assigned. The affordances of hallways and stairwells, which dominated, are particularly conducive to movement such as in chases. The fact that the less constraining places outside—not having in-session classes with instructors so nearby—were not used more suggests that the indoor places were selected for the affordances for chases rather than the affordances for distance from institutional agendas. The second projects were shot mostly in the classroom to make use of the kitchen equipment. Therefore, there is little evidence at Urban High that third spaces are sought at a physical level.

Boarding High offered an ideal test, because there were fewer constraints and more exploration, but there was also only one project per group. The project by Wicket and Jerome offers a clear time distinction, however, because they shot it over two sessions, a week apart. The analysis of this project could theoretically be very enlightening. What is evident is that the boys mostly did a circular pattern each day, shooting everything that caught there attention as they moved away from the art classroom and back, seeming to move from these basic circles only to seek three specific locations: two that resulted in shots included in the edited piece and one that led them to the music department, where they remained for some time. The pattern of their movements initially seem to suggest that the locations were selected entirely based on context—by what was convenient. Further analysis, however, reveals that all shots were taken in the less-defined places of hallways, outside sidewalks and lawns, doorways, the backs of classrooms, and the music department (where different practices clearly existed). These students only recorded from locations that could at least temporarily be dominated by their own agendas, places that might be considered third spaces.

The focal projects at Urban and Suburban Highs offer similar insights: The students at both schools nearly always remained in student-owned places or in the spaces—like doorways—between or on the peripheries of places. The only exception is one classroom in which the Urban High students interviewed members of a class from the teacher-owned front of the classroom; these events recorded in this location are considered in more detail in the section about classrooms. What is remarkable is how unusual it was for students to record in more constrained places. A cursory examination of other video projects reveal that there were only four instances in which students recorded in the areas normally occupied by a teacher or other staff member, and two of these were in the “safe sex” project from Urban High. The third was the Urban High news story about the college center, and the fourth was a project at Boarding High in which staff members were briefly shown as they sat at their desks. The comparative prevalence of such locations in the pilot data seems best attributed to the context of recording after-school or during the “PM” school, an after hours program in which the school was mostly empty.

The potential for development to become visible through the choice of location and placement within locations is thus far supported only when students are “practicing” or, in other words, when the location does not matter. When working with greater purpose, students were generally found to seek places that had the least constraint while still enabling necessary activities. The chosen places offered a number of affordances: Activities are more easily visible from the peripheries, movement requires space to move in, and student tend to be most interested in what is outside staff dominated places. The context—in terms of assignments, purposes, and affordances of the location—had more to do with the choices students made than any developmental or “cultural” reasons.

Of course, the focal students did not produce many projects or truly become experienced videographers. Given more time working with cameras, students may have sought places where the ideology embodied in it conflicted with their own. Perhaps also their lack of interest in staff dominated places is an indication of their relationships with school. Therefore, the supposition that a third space in videography is sought at a physical level is supported only by the observation that practice work is generally done in the least constraining places and that subsequent work also avoids constraint, but whether it is the constraint of an ideology imposed by an authority or merely the absence of affordances that led to choices will require additional research. A microanalysis of videos is necessary to derive more about the meaning and uses of places.

Previous

Contents

Next

References