D.E.M.M.O. Productions Experimetal Class Description for Hollywood High School,
By T.H. Culhane, 1995
D.E.M.M.O. Productions (Digital Engineering for Multi-Media Occupations) is an experimental program at Hollywood High School that integrates the technical, technological and vocational areas of students instruction (digital engineering), the academic areas that underpin our multi-media information age (language arts, history, science and math) and career oriented instruction that helps students relate their school experience to the workplace. It conforms to the Perkins 2+2 and 2+4 models that link high school to higher education while allowing students who are not college bound to find their niche in growth industry trades. D.E.M.M.O. Productions conforms to WASC guidelines for school improvement by offering project based/portfolio assessed instruction to its students; the teachers in the program use a coaching model and a product driven curriculum.
The emphases in this program are critical thinking, creative thinking and real world problem solving. The students are nurtured in their ability to "confront the blank page." -- to solve the fundamental problem of how to create something of value where nothing existed before. The class teaches students how to draw on prior knowledge and use what is known and relevant to them as the raw material from which they can fashion new product.
The class helps students overcome writers block, artists block and other creativity blocks such as stage fright, "boredom", circular reasoning and "infinite iteration". It supplies techniques for overcoming fear of censory and criticism -- fear that freeze the mind and shut down higher cortical functions. When fear and low self-esteem do impede student progress and interfere with motivation, the curriculum teaches students how to work with their limbic system and their fight or flight response as tools for focusing and directing creative energy.
D.E.M.M.O. Productions draws on a solid research foundation in "Brain Compatible Learning" and "Multiple Intelligence" Theory and uses the art ,psychology and science of what used to be called "film-making" in order to teach students how to fashion a compelling, engaging and socially useful story out of the uninflected data stream supplied by academic education. The art and science of story-telling through many media then becomes a valuable tool that students can use to order their world and make sense of the vast amounts of information that can be so intimidating and bewildering in our information age.
The program uses all creative and technical arts tools and manipulatives that are available, from pencil and paper to sophisticated multi-media audio-visual computers, video and audio production hardware, musical instrument digital interface technology, clay, paint and paper mache and and electronic test equipment. With guidance from the instructor, students put these tools to use in the creation of multi-media presentations that illustrate and explain concepts drawn from the academic curricula they are confronting in their other classes.
In effect then, D.E.M.M.O. Productions is an "Edu-tainment" class in which students learn how to process and manipulate information and create their own learning materials -- content based, entertaining instructional materials that are "of the students, by the students, and for the students."
Course Description
The major emphasis 0f this course is to develop the student’s ability
to communicate visual ideas using basic filmmaking techniques. Story
writing, story-based display, basic visual composition, and general
reproduction, and skills will be included with camera techniques, animation,
and line action planning.
Representative Objectives
In accordance with his or her ability and capacities, the student grows in ability to:
- Recognize filmmaking as a basic method of communication in our economy.
- Apply the art elements and principles to filmmaking.
- Acknowledge filmmaking as an art form.
- Perceive filmmaking as a medium that unites the visual arts, the literary arts, and the performing arts.
- Recognize the role of film in professions other than entertainment including medicine, education, space exploration, and business.
- Coordinate thinking processes with technical skills.
- Develop objective aesthetic visual criteria related to filmmaking.
- Value experimentation and originality.
- Experiment with light and design as they apply to filmmaking.
Compare the content, intent, and use of different kinds of films including drama, comedy, documentary, and commercial.Assess vocational aptitude and interest in a career in filmmaking or related professions.
Application of Basic Skills
The student will use:
- Language skills related to the preparation of stories and scripts for film.
- Reading and research skills to write a paper on the history of film.
- Appropriate technical vocabulary.
- Reading and conprehension skills in the study of camera and equipment manuals.
- Matematical skills to plan the length of films, and the timing of scenes and actions for animation.
- Organizational skills to plan and produce a film.
Visual discrimination skills through application of the art elements to set design, character, and lighting.
Performance Skills
The student will:
- Research information for media productions.
- Organize work activities to meet project deadlines.
- Funtion as an informed consumer of the visual media.
- Identify the occupations and professions related to the mass media.
- Identify the occupations and professions that use filmaking.
- Communicate an idea using visual symbols.
- Apply the art principles to the design and construction of sets and props.
- Demonstrate basic drawing skills.
- Compare various films made by students and other filmmakers.
- Verbalize personal reactions to a film.
- Write a report on the history of cinema.
- Prepare a script.
- Develop a storyboard.
- Use a camera.
Instructional Units
Topics
Phisical Properties of film and light
History of Cinema
Animation Techniques
Live Action Filming
Preproduction Planning
Camera Techniques
Design Elements in film
Sound
Editing
Lighting
Careers in Film
Set and Prop Design
