Evoking Childhood: Pedagogy

Artist's Statement

The argument I was trying to present in Pedagogy is two-fold. The first is that much of the educational system does not succeed in warranting student attention. And the second is that I feel as a child I missed out on learning valuable information by choosing not to pay attention. It’s the fault of both sides. To accomplish this, I tried to tell the story through the female student’s perspective, through some POV shots as well as what she hears in the world around her. For the teacher, the focus is put on the mouth, to emphasize the drawling lecture. With the student, I attempted to use her eyes as much as possible, allowing her sightline to communicate her focus, and lack thereof. I made the decision to shoot without camera movement and then add some movement in post. This allowed me to create a false sense of deep space during the imaginative portion—emphasizing the student’s desire to be out of the monotony. When she has a lucid moment, however, I do not incorporate any movement in the frame. She is again, stuck in flat space. I also had the teacher and sleeping student wear black while the female student wore a brighter color.

While editing, I began to realize that the film was a lot more unsettling than I had originally planned. It feels uncomfortable with the combination of music, gibberish talk, framing, and flat camera manipulation. I believe I am successful in communicating my two arguments, the flawed educational system and my own flawed effort. However, I set out with filming this with boredom being the key feeling I wanted to communicate. While editing I noticed that a lot more angst showed over boredom. Perhaps wanting to call out current pedagogy in grade school resulted in a more spiteful film? In the future, I need to have pacing in mind while preparing. That became the major challenge in editing, as many shots just felt too long, and it was challenging to trim them down. Another thing to pay attention to is continuity. During the point of view shot from the ground, the whiteboard had actual English instead of scribbles. I didn’t notice this until I was well into editing. If I were to remake this piece, I would try to show more thought process for the female student before she shrinks. I could accomplish this by adding a shot of the space at the bottom of the door (an escape route), and having another shrunken shot of ‘almost’ making it out.