#sothinky teaches things

[sothinky]

This fall’s literature-into-film/adaptation class includes . . . versions of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Birds, A.I., Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mulan . . . and an ep each of Sherlock and Loki.

[sothinky]

Hee hee, being silly today. This was one of the q’s I asked students. The were reading “Memento Mori,” the story Memento is based on, for class today. No angry faces so far!

[sothinky]

I use a service called Remind to be able to text my students without them gaining access to my cell number. So many of its features have changed over the few years I’ve been using it, and it’s weird how much we use it, or why, or how quickly I might talk to a student who has a question about something.

I mostly use it so that I when I cancel class, I can maybe save them a ride to campus, lol. I don’t cancel that often, but definitely do at least a couple of times in the semester (as a rule, hahaha).

But I do send them reminders, a bit, which I don’t like to do often (they have to bring something to class today, and dammit it will be just easier if a few more of them actually did the work; we could be productive and shit).

Mostly I like to send them silly GIFs.

[sothinky]

Did our conversation on Amélie in the film and lit class today, and it was so much fun. I knew going in what they’d observed (they do a survey the morning of class so I can get their replies beforehand), and they tend to see the film as a simplistic love story. So it’s fun to say, “Hey, this film’s about death . . .” and “Why do you think I’d say that?” Then we dug into the many references to death, Don Quixote, and so on. 

I always think I talk to much, and I definitely have them work out their own theories. We don’t arrive at full “readings” that are only “mine”—I think it’s important not to do that! But food for thought? There was a lot, and they seemed to enjoy trying to figure it all out.

[sothinky]

Cool things happened in my film and lit class this week. I really wanted the class to do hands-on film things (and we’ll do more, I hope, all term). This was our first chance. They’d read about camera shot types, movements and angles for class. Rather than just show examples of those things, groups were assigned a category (each one had about five kinds of shots, like pan, or zoom, or close-up, or oblique, etc.). They came up with a basic story concept (student is late for class, etc.) and had to get shots that were examples of the terms they were assigned. 

They loved it, and took such pride showing each other their clips. It was so cool. Then after having worked with all the terms and shot types, we watched the first ten minutes of Amélie (we’re discussing the whole thing tomorrow), where pretty much every shot type is used. Really fun.

Just hoping they watch the film. I’m trying to not waste our class time—or their time—having us sit and watch a movie together. Fingers crossed and all that.

[sothinky]

crayonsandteaparties replied to your post “This fall’s text lists: Intro to Fiction: a big story collection...”

An excellent list! The variety is really great! :)

Thanks! It’s been a while since I taught these, so of course any old syllabi have been scrapped! 

My new thing with the lit classes is figuring out how to use our class time well. In the film class, traditionally, we’d spend time in class watching the film, you know? But that seems almost rude these days . . . when we can watch it online, often, or on Netflix, or whatever. So I told them I wanted to use our class time to dig deeper into the texts and even find time to play with filmmaking and screenwriting (because it’s an adaptation class). They are excited and seem appreciative, so that’s cool.

I’m experimenting with flipping certain parts of the course, which is weird and challenging in its own way. 

[sothinky]

Remember that green screen I bought a long time ago, for my movie making for my classes? When I’m on camera by myself, and then later try to put some other background behind that footage, the video turns out weird—my eye color changes from blue to purple (!)

But last night while I was filming, Jo and my husband got behind me and danced, and to show them how the green screen worked, I took that footage and put the Harlem Shake vid with LeBron James in the background—it was pretty hilarious. And my eyes stayed blue.

Just gotta figure it out so the videos of just me look less scary . . . 

[sothinky]

Also, we started the project in poetry today that’s based off the film The Five Obstructions. (I do this every spring, so you’ve probably heard me write about it before.) They were really psyched about it, until I had them pick the poem today (of the ones they’ve written for class) that they’ll use for the project. That was all fine, but then I handed out the first set of obstructions. They have to remake that poem they picked according to these rules:

they have to feature details that use all five senses

they have to keep consistent line lengths

they have to incorporate some kind of dialogue in quotations somewhere

they have to make the speaker of the poem a child

I wanted to film them so badly, because the expressions on their faces after reading those! They were so mad! It was just perfect. That’s exactly how Jørgen Leth, the filmmaker who has to recreate his own film according to Lars von Trier’s rules, reacts. Then he does the film and is ecstatic about how the thing turned out.

So curious to see how they do with this—the last one *is* really hard to work with, but once they figure it out they’ll come to class Monday really happy with what they wrote, I think.