Bridging the Gap
The chance to write this blog has come at a good time as we are deep in pre-planning for our major summer productions and it seems every week we are at a conference about film education and regeneration. The next blog will look at that, but this one will look at my concerns having made some school visits recently to discuss film in all its glorious forms. Now film and media has been spreading through the priority lists of education bodies like a virus. Like a new virus, no one really understands it or knows how to address and deal with it. My recent experience is that schools are not really doing the basics. There are small, simple things that could help students and teachers in a major way.
A major concern is the increased detachment of young people as audiences through the increase of You Tube, mobile phone and iPod viewing, as well as a general removal from the social experience of cinema. Coupled with the troublesome nature of taking pupils to the cinema as a group and, in most places nowadays, finding something decent to see, there is an ever widening gap between young people and the cinema experience.
Visiting schools and showing film work to film students recently was quite chastening, because of the nature of the screening experience. The study of cinema needs to include the study of audience, and the effects of communal viewing in a dark, respectful atmosphere. If film is studied in school through a film course or as a media module there has to be an effort to create a relatable atmosphere. Small things like blackout curtains and slightly comfier chairs all help but my main concern and the point of this blog is the technology.
Currently, studying film in the classroom is comparable to watching a film on a computer at home and this will only increase young people’s alienation from the cinema experience. School schemes such as the UK Film Council’s ‘Film Club’ can help but again, we need to ask ”how are people watching films?". Surely, in an era of such technological capability and increased media literacy focus the age of watching films through data projectors and with bad sound should be behind us?
It doesn’t take a lot of investment to install a decent home cinema style system that is suited to the demands and nuances of modern creative filmmaking. The result, to see a film through superior projection and with detailed sound, allows for greater immersion in the film and a greater respect for the nature of film watching. There has to be a move towards this; it is not cost prohibitive and the assistance of setting up suitable equipment could tie in nicely with local companies’ corporate and social responsibility agendas. When I am thinking of this investment I am not only thinking of film but television where some of the most interesting and important creative work of our time (yes, of course I mean ‘The Wire’) is being produced.
Young people have access to sophisticated technology and have a far more sophisticated relationship with it than most schools and even colleges acknowledge. In order for the future creators, audiences and critics to produce important and truly artistic work and maintain the collaborative and community nature of the arts experience, the delivery of media texts needs to be as high a priority as the place media has in the curriculum and education strategies.