Challenges of teaching IB Film in the virtual classroom

Practical filmmaking has been the most obvious bit of collateral damage suffered by film students since the onset of quarantine. In this piece, I will address the first – and in my view most important – of the two areas that the new IB syllabus now requires us to focus on in the first semester of teaching film, namely i) Exploring production roles (practical) and ii) Reading/Contextualising film (theory).

After an initial period of shock and dismay, we were left with the question of how to go about teaching practical skills such as cinematography and editing in the virtual classroom. Since the launch of the 2019 syllabus, film students are required to start compile a 9-minute portfolio of ‘creative explorations’ and 9-pages of written reflections known as ‘portfolio pages’ in addition to the 7-minute collaborative short film as well as two hefty pieces of academic study. In other words, we have to get down to the portfolio work pretty much from the get-go. And as quarantine had kicked in only a matter of a few weeks after the start of the academic year, we had barely had time to familiarise the students with the equipment or even to try out some basic camera or lighting techniques. As it turned out, this problem proved academic since there was no way of getting the equipment out to any of the students during quarantine in any case.

In line with the IB’s own guidelines, we settled instead for getting the students to use their phones or other devices for filming, using elementary lighting effects (a scarf over a light shade, a torch held near the ground shining upwards etc.) to achieve some effective, homegrown effects. The students then downloaded the resulting short ‘reel’ pieces – lasting one-minute or less – on to their laptops for some rudimentary editing before uploading them to classroom. While the technical possibilities of calibrating their shots in terms of exposure, speed or ISO are extremely limited on most phones (some apps to do allow for manipulation of focal length or basic filtering), we encouraged the students to compensate for this shortfall by employing a range of cinematic techniques such as unusual camera angles, framing or movement. They took the advice to heart. It quickly became apparent that, in most cases, this emphasis on ‘shot creativity’ was the way to go. What their pieces lacked in technical finesse, they made up for in terms of creativity and imaginative use of domestic resources. The students dragged in family members, pets, house cleaners to act as crew or to cast them as zombies or film-noir detective. They then had to write the mandatory one-page reflection for each of these pieces, outlining on the limitations imposed on them by quarantine, and the measures taken to overcome them.

My conclusion in all of this is that, while work on the collaborative film project for both 5B and 6B – which counts for the biggest share of the marks overall – is beyond reach for now, the portfolio work may actually benefit from students being confined to their houses. The ingenuity, focus and resourcefulness required to make these short pieces, in some ways, more than compensates for the lack of equipment or technical support. With careful online instruction, examples, access to youtube tutorials and even the odd masterclass from one of our professional contacts, the students are going to be able – or have been able - to try out a range of camera, editing and sound recording techniques from the safety of their homes. The takeaway for me from all of this is that while film theory work occupies two thirds of the week, the ‘learning by doing’ part of the course is too important to sacrifice because of logistical or technical issues. Obviously, filming with a phone is far from ideal, but the resulting creative exploration is a more than adequate way of demonstrating a student’s artistic intentions; their understanding of different forms of visual code as well as an original response to a chosen piece of source material. Covid-19 has robbed us of collaborative filmmaking for now; so to also lose the only other opportunity for students to experiment with film language for themselves would have represented a huge and morale-sapping blow. Happily, in this area at least, the show has and will gone on.