11 Year Old Movie Makers

Making Your Mark: Digital Inscription, Animation and A New Visual Semiotic

This article, by Burn and Parker (2001) was about 11 year olds at 4 schools who were given the opportunity to work together with their peers from their school to create an animated movie. As an introduction to the unit, they were taken to see animated films at a movie theatre. Then students from each school got busy planning their animated versions of Little Red Riding Hood. It must have been a great team building experience since the storyline was divided up among the students at each school. Just thinking of the logistics of it..together they had to decide on the characters and backgrounds...it definitely required a lot of agreements among peers and is definitely a great cooperative learning opportunity. Backgrounds were drawn on paper and then scanned into the computer. Characters were created on a computer program. They had a lot of support from "experts" such as The Director of Media Arts from the college , a film media editor as well as a professional animator got to work with the kids when they created their animated movie over 2 days at the college. A group of 6 "editors" returned from each school to complete their movie on a third day. Then their movies were shown on the big screen. Wow, what a great opportunity.
The authors describe "the grammar of the moving image," as a new way of composing. They argue that it "digital modes of inscription may offer a greater freedom of expression to users, especially in education," (155). While I doubt anyone would argue that digital composing is not an amazing learning experience, I can't help but imagine how expensive it would be to equip schools with these computer software programs. And how the teacher would have to be very well trained to take this to half the extent that the researchers in the article did. It required experts and editing materials used at the college. If we have trouble getting students access to computers period, then digital composing this advanced is going to be even tougher! I think that these students were very lucky to get this experience.
But on a more hopeful side...The article does get me excited about the future..sharing that "the availability of the tools of digital inscription turns the audience that was once limited to spectators into producers." That this type of "inscriptional technology" is growing, and definitely something that will be more widely used in the future. So I look forward to a time when it won't seem unrealistic to make the opportunity for this type of composing widely available to students in all schools!