Each student is unique in their learning process.

Individuality should be respected in the context of collaboration.

A class or instructive session should be a circumstance that will activate potential and inspire students to reach beyond what they know.

2024 DOCUMENTARY FILM EXPEDITION at The Community School for Place-based Education

For six weeks in January and February of 2024, I joined the “Alpines” (the class of ten middle school students) Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays from 1:00 to 3:00 pm for an arts intensive in Documentary Filmmaking. This hands on Expedition (the school programs six week study intensives as “Expeditions”) gave the students a chance to work with professional cameras with prime lenses on different supports, learn basic editing in Da Vinci Resolve, introduced them to the storyboarding process and how narrative works in documentary films. Besides working in 24fps video they experimented with stop motion photography to create titles and credits and develop an understanding of the relationship between shooting and playback frame rates. The Alpines got a chance to try different roles on a film crew, working together to create short movies before settling on a theme for the main project. For this they chose to create a short film about the pre-school class, which they screened to an audience of fifty community members and participated in a Q&A at College of the Atlantic on Valentine’s Day.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE ALPINE’S REELS THAT SCREENED ON FEBRUARY 14th.

Prior to working with the Alpines, I was faculty at the Putney School Summer Programs, where I taught the Painting Intensive course for three summers, 2002, 2003, 2004.