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Production Equipment
Some artifacts have particular significance: those used in
video production. First to note is that there exists a divide between
“Mac” users and “PC” users 11
that is
particularly noticeable among
videographers. An artist/teacher who was setting up a program at
another school I visited told me that he had spoken to a number of
artists who all preferred MacIntosh computers, but MacIntosh cost much
more. One group of college interns told me they could not afford them,
thus they were struggling because they did not really know iMovie, the
Apple program they were teaching students to use in the course. 12
Both Boarding High and Urban High used Macs: iBooks (low-end laptops)
at Boarding High, where the equipment came and went with the interns,
and iMacs (low-end desktops) at Urban High. By contrast, Suburban High
used PCs with Windows, which reflects a more profound ideological
difference than may immediately be apparent. Macs require a greater
initial financial commitment, but my observations suggest that less
work by “experts” (the teacher at Suburban High) is necessary in the
use of Macs. More importantly, the program iMovie is far easier, though
with fewer advanced options, than Adobe Premiere, the program used at
Suburban High. Premiere is a rough equivalent to Apple’s Final Cut Pro
in terms of advanced options. The ease of using iMovie was essential at
both schools where it was used: Boarding High students had very little
time to spend on their projects and could not afford to spend it
learning a more complicated program. At Urban High, the teachers lacked
expertise with video technology; they could not have taught students a
more complicated program and did not need to teach them iMovie because
students taught themselves.
The choice of cameras is also meaningful: digital or analog. Boarding
High has the simplest
story: The students were provided with digital camcorders, small
cameras that transmit audio and video quickly and directly into
computers via a “firewire” in a process typically referred to as capturing.
13 The story is
not that simple, however, because the number
of cameras that were available varied from class to class as they came
and went with the college interns. During the first course, one camera
was left with the art teacher for a couple of weeks, but this practice
was not repeated. In fact, the interns had difficulty obtaining
equipment for the second course because other people were using it and
the director was less involved, thus I lent them my camcorder to allow
students more access. An enormous constraint on students at Boarding
High was, therefore, inherent in the lack of access to cameras and
computers.
At Urban High, most of the cameras were digital camcorders, but the
program also had Hi-8 camcorders, which are small like digital
camcorders but required the videotapes to be copied onto digital
cameras for capturing. One teacher reported that they received two Hi-8
cameras the first year and later received four digital camcorders. The
number of working cameras varied, however, because they frequently were
broken. The Media 1 class was given access only to the Hi-8 cameras.
The advantage in Media 1, however, was that students were allowed to
take Hi-8 camcorders home with them—a practice never allowed in the
other two courses.
Suburban High had a different approach. It used Panasonic S-VHS
cameras, which have some digital components but are still analog, thus
they require additional hardware to convert their work into digital
media. To some extent, these cameras are a more “professional” camera,
though
the technology is older. The artist/teacher I spoke with at another
school, who used all digital equipment, argued that his equipment was
more technologically advanced than most television stations, and the
movie industry currently debates the use of digital cameras, so there
is a rationale to using older equipment. The field is changing rapidly
as high definition technology, satellite,
and other technologies are developed, and which technologies will come
to dominate is debatable. The Suburban High teacher took advantage of
the shift to digital technology to get low cost, sometimes free
equipment, because it
was a little older. The S-VHS cameras are very big by comparison to the
camcorders, resting usually on the camera operator’s shoulder when it
is not on a tripod, but it worked well with the Telepromptors. The
program had five S-VHS cameras until one was stolen; this was replaced
at some point with video club money. One was also broken for a while.
The bulky S-VHS cameras were not as easy to move around, but they
tended
to produce steadier images because of the shoulder support. Suburban
High also had two VHS cameras—also substantially bigger than the
camcorders but smaller than the S-VHS cameras—that the teacher allowed
students to take home. This freedom in where to record made a
noticeable difference in the activities included in video projects,
such as the use of cars, trips to “sites,” and the existence of more
elaborate projects.
Suburban High additionally had a wide range of video
accessories—equipment that is not trivial in the quality of production.
Lights and light stands, various types of microphones, tripods and
tripod dollies, mixing boards, graphics generators, headsets,
Telepromptors, linear editing devices (which work directly with tape),
and equipment for video
streaming on the school intranet. The focus of beginning classes was to
learn to operate all this equipment. Suburban students were afforded
the possibility of creating professional quality videos, thus promoting
a technical orientation. Urban High had, in addition to their cameras,
two boom microphones and two floodlights with stands, which were used
primarily without studying lighting or audio techniques, but students
could not have used them according to established patterns because the
equipment was insufficient. Boarding High had access to no equipment
beyond camcorders and iBooks.
Of the three schools, Suburban High had the most equipment but of the
oldest
technologies. Its classroom was a place devoted to video and more
required technical knowledge. Students were able to train for
professional studios as they are, though not for how they may soon
become.
Boarding High had the least equipment, but all of it was the newest
technology available. It specifically was geared to exploring the
digital revolution within the realm of art. Urban High was in between:
It had all the equipment it needed for students to adequately, if not
perfectly, create projects. Urban students could not have been prepared
for immediate jobs in video production under these circumstances, but
they were also not encouraged to explore digital affordances:
Accessories such as tripods, lights, and microphones can dramatically
change the quality of raw material, but digital editing, while unable
to fix bad audio and video, can manipulate and alter footage beyond
recognition. Neither of these were promoted in the activities or
material resources at Urban High, but a focus on literacy was also
lacking. The school had not committed to New Media as promoted by the
reform project. The unevenness of material conditions within the school
did not, however, seriously limit students; material conditions place
the disconnection that was observed between students and school in a
context where it might have been predicted, implying that a message was
received by students.
To facilitate a comparison, program characteristics are summarized in Table 3. Their relevance and some
details are discussed throughout the
analysis.
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