The Teacher As Film Editor: The Bad Bits

Transcript:

Melissa Milner 0:09

In this Teacher As Film Editor minisode, I share a concept that Walter Murch writes about in his amazing book on film editing called In the Blink of an Eye. It is the concept of cutting out the "bad bits." He writes, "Because in a certain sense, editing is cutting out the bad bits. The tough question is what makes a bad bit when you are shooting a whole movie, and the camera wanders, that's obviously a bad bit, and it's clear that you want to cut it out. The goal of a home movie is usually pretty simple, and unrestructured record of events in continuous time. The goal of narrative films is much more complicated because of the fragmented time structure and the need to indicate internal states of being. And so it becomes proportionately more complicated to identify what is a bad bit. And what is bad in one film may be good in another. In fact, one way of looking at the process of making a film is to think of it as the search to identify what for the particular film you are working on, is a uniquely bad bit. So the editor embarks on the search to identify these bad bits, and cut them out, provided the doing so does not disrupt the structure of the good bits that are left."

Melissa Milner 1:25

So this right away, I think about when we try to teach curriculum to students, and we're planning and, you know, we look at a lesson and we say, I know these students aren't going to get this right away. What can I do? What good bits can I add? That's what I think of right away. But there's actually a lot of metaphors. Later in the same chapter Murch writes more about this. He writes, "You could sit in one room with a pile of dailies, and another editor could sit in the next room with exactly the same footage. And both of you would make different films out of the same material, each is going to make different choices about how to structure it, which is to say when, and in what order to release those various pieces of information."

Melissa Milner 2:10

Now, when I read this one, of course, the other fourth grade teachers in my team, like we teach differently, we have the same curriculum, but we're going to approach it differently. And that's sort of the art and science of teaching. It's what makes teaching awesome. And one thing I think is interesting is that our math program that we have now, it's really very much, just show them this warm up, just do this warm up, and then kind of let them go. Don't release the information until they've tried it a little bit first, then you call them back and you release some of the information, or a student shares some of the information that they found, and so on. So this really, really spoke to me when I was thinking about our new math curriculum, which is the Illustrative Math. But there obviously are many metaphors to these "bad bits." Again, teachers have their own style and decisions about what's important and what to emphasize. So the film footage or dailies that Murch talks about are similar to the district purchased curriculums or programs, the state standards etc. So another thing about the fourth grade teachers in my district is we're all teaching the same ARC reading and writing program as well as the math. But the parts we choose to emphasize or cut within that framework is our own version of editing. I'm assuming that our humanities coordinator is going to see a different thing in every fourth grade classroom in my school, it's going to look different.

Melissa Milner 3:54

The other thing is a bad bit for some students in your classroom may be the right fit for other students in your classroom. And that, of course, is the importance of differentiation and accommodations. But we are not film editors. We do need to do the lessons as much in order as we can. And we are really supposed to, you know, use the graphic organizers that are given us, the research topics that are given, the research questions, etc. So as much as we can play around and cut some things, we do need to keep the good bits which is the curriculum that has again been purchased by our district. So I hope you enjoyed this minisode and I am forever amazed with how film editing has parallels to teaching. Thanks for listening.

Melissa Milner 4:47

For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening and that's a wrap.