Two Versions of a Day in My Life
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| Summary: | Students imagine they are running for an important political office of some sort. Phyllis Knight, a fictitious documentary filmmaker, approaches the student and asks if she can make a documentary film about a day in that student's life. For the first part of the assignment, students must select a typical day in their life and record (in writing) all of the things a camera would see if it filmed them from sunup to sundown. After the students have completed this part of the assignment and handed it in, Phyllis informs them that someone broke into her editing studio and made a copy of all the footage that she had filmed about the student. She thinks it will be used to make a film that portrays the student as a bad person and which will then be shown to voters in order to discredit them. In order to apologize, she has agreed that she will take her footage and edit it to make the student look like a good person to be shown to voters. To complete this project, students must go through a series of steps to create two storyboards about a day in their life: one which portrays them as a good person and one which portrays them as a bad person. They must use the elements of film and the techniques of editing that have been discussed in class to accomplish this assignment. |
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| Age Group: | High School |
| Concepts: | mise-en-scene, editing, montage, propaganda, form = content |
| Curricular Goals: | In the unit that this project was primarily designed for, the students are learning about how to interpret Formalist symbolism (in other words, the interpretations of the mise-en-scene and editing in relation to the message that is being conveyed) so that the students can be numbered among the film elite who understand the deeper symbolism of shot composition and editing techniques. The goal is to increase film literacy by teaching students how to decode and interpret the meaning of texts visually. This project is designed to help students synthesize these concepts by composing and editing the shots and explaining why they chose the shots they chose. |
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Project Directions (day by day):
On the first day of the unit, have students complete the "Day In My Life" assignment. Then, a few weeks later, after the students have learned about the elements of film, introduce the rest of the assignment (see the project guidelines for more specific details). Each day of the unit, work on a different step in the project until the students have completed all the steps.
Grading:
See the attached grading criteria guide. I highly recommend developing a grading rubric for evaluating the subjective portions of the project.
Author's Notes:
I'd like some feedback from users to see if they feel this project is worthwhile, if it really tests the concepts it is supposed to be testing.