Writing with Video

“What ideas from these readings are most relevant to you professionally, in what ways, and why?”

After reading “Writing with Video”, I am trying to work out how a filmmaker, or someone steeped in the business of making films might regard the academic/scholarly interpretation of video composition. Professionally speaking, I have been writing and producing many types of multimedia products for many years. One of my greatest passions has always been the filmmaking process, from conception through to the completion of a distributable filmic product. I believe this will always be true. Throughout the reading of the article, I found myself asking, whether or not, the collected authors had been to the movies in the past couple of years, if ever, or had they become too entrenched, mired in the want to do something other than composition studies, so much so that they myopically co-opted an entire disciple – namely film studies?
There is a reductive nature to academia that can be enlightening, but can be just as equally blinding. In the article, “Writing with Video,” Lovett, Purdy, Gossett, Lamanna, and Squier, in a concerted effort, push for university composition programs that diminish, through pedagogical design, “the adversarial nature of text vs. media.” (Lovett, et. al., p. 3) There aim is to inform students how any communicative form, designed in any mode, and disseminated via any medium, shapes meaning. It is an ongoing effort to, “raise students’ awareness of video as doing rhetorical work,” and “to have students recognize the multiple modes available to them in meaning making.” (Lovett, et. al., p. 5) The resultant production by students, as highlighted throughout the article, are a series of student produced videos, usually dealing with some issue from outside the discipline of composition studies. One particular video highlights a professional frustration on my part, albeit a very small one. Valerie, a student whose work was referred to within the article, and who is the author/designer of “Dis-Orientation-Asian,” surmised her experience to the researcher group. She asserts that, “students benefit not only when they have the opportunity to engage in the composing process with new media, but also when they see these processes modeled at institutional levels. Writing with video provides such a model.” Perhaps it is due to her lack of experience in multimedia production, hence the overtly clichéd description of her video piece, but her summation exposes the assumption that filmmakers, sound designers, film music scorers, art designers and directors, all working under the instruction of a director and group of producers, are unaware of the rhetorical processes at work in the products of their business. The article exposes something else. Namely, that renaming something, in this particular case, film/film studies as “Writing with Video”, does not make it new or revolutionary, but rather a co-opting and attempted reification of a well-established idea, practice, and discipline.
It seems that the authors behind “Writing with Video” are missing what is obvious to many in the film industry. The cohesion of multiple communicative modes, each with its uniquely varied emotional draw and stimulus, be it sound, color, etc., adds a richness, intertextuality reliant on provenance, and a multiplicity of pathos to a narrative film far beyond the written artifact. Filmmakers understand this facet of their discipline, their profession. This is why during the filmmaking, video game designing, etc. there are several departments who are headed up by experts in their respective fields.
Let us, as an example, look at narrative prose and the act of writing well. Narrative prose does not require expertise in all the modes to be used in the creation of a particular multimodal artifact. It requires mastery in one mode, writing and all the process that lead up to a well-received completed piece. In contrast, a multimedia text requires a much broader skill set, or literacies, if you will, especially with regard to new technologies. To master and subsequently utilize all that is required in creating a multimodal artifact, in my example a feature film, however possible, would require a Herculean effort by the rhetor/filmmaker. Filmmaking is a perfect example as to why the developers of “Writing with Video” are missing the point. Asking students to compose via multiple jobs/literacies, as an adjunct, some might say a replacement, for a written composition, ensures that they develop skills to produce a finished product, but does not require, nor affords them the time or resources to develop any of these skills to an expert level. One of the major objectives of any worthwhile filmmaking program is to teach its students that multimedia production is a collaborative effort, which uses many rhetorical approaches from a variety of disciplines, to arrive at a hopefully well-received finished product. After reading the article, I would say that “Writing for Video” is an exposure course, and if not, it should be reconsidered as one. It should be regarded as an introduction to the literacies and their accompanying communication technologies available to the rhetor.
Professionally, I have come to realize what filmmakers have known for years that creating any multimodal text is a collaborative effort. In fact, Lovett, et. al., admit that “Writing for Video” is a course were students are aware of the accretion of disciplines, and the benefits of collaboration. “Composition courses enroll students from across the university, Writing with Video has helped bring art and design expertise in the visual to a wider cross-section of students. Students have enrolled from art and design, education, communications, computer science, cinema studies, English, psychology, business, and engineering.” This sounds like the putting together of a crew.
Erin, a student who produced a documentary video about and appropriately titled, “No Child Left Behind,” espoused about the difficulties of the project.” I found myself thinking it was easier to do a paper.” (Lovett, et.al. pg. 12) This statement is professionally relevant to me in several ways. As a writer, I have spent several years, my longest to date being four, conceptualizing, researching, developing, and pitching screenplays. I use this example, because writing, composition and all that it entails, is just one part of the film/video, multimedia – whatever you want to term it – project. Any working filmmaker today would argue against auteur theory. There is just too much work to be done when developing a multimedia project of significant magnitude. “Writing with Video”, or producing any artifact that is the result of a combination of modes, forces the writer/rhetor/designer to posses a much broader skill set, and possibly, expertise in no single mode within that set of skills. This is exactly why a filmmaker, as a useful example, builds a crew of experts in sound, lighting, construction, electrical, cinematography, art direction, acting, etc., because it has been well-established in film studies that that the adept creation of a multimodal text is the consequence of a collaborative effort. “Writing with Video”, seems to be both positive and negative. As replacement for composition studies, it is a disaster. Any multimodal artifact is conceptualized via a progenative mode and medium, which is usually writing and text. To inform students about the development about multimodal text as a replacement for writing is to deny any possibility of the student becoming an experienced producer of narrative via text, where it usually begins. The idea “Writing with Video” is great, but it has already been done. Any freshman can flip through a course catalogue and find film and convergent media that have a strong foundation in teaching the uses and rhetorical processes of multimodal texts.

"Writing with Video: What Happens When Composition Comes Off the Page?" (with Maria Lovett, Katherine E. Gossett, Carrie A. Lamanna, and Joseph Squier). Reading (and Writing) New Media: A Collection of Essays and New Media. Ed. Jim Kalmbach and Cheryl E. Ball. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.