Had a delightful conversation over coffee yesterday with friend and colleague, Terrill Fischer. Terrill is a learning and development consultant (and improvisational comedian) with a solid business background. I was fortunate to have my video camera along and I filmed Terrill as he recounted a story he recently heard Thiagi (one of his favorite training gurus) tell during a certification workshop. To me, the story highlights some deep truths about instructional design and it's re-told in an interesting and warm way. Enjoy!
In her 2010 TED Talk, Dr. Temple Grandin briefly shares what it's like to grow up with autism, how she thrived, and how her interactions with parents, teachers, and mentors have helped her to overcome many of the challenges that she has faced due to having a "different" kind of mind.
Dr. Grandin contends that people with autism don't all think the same way. There are the photo-realistic visual thinkers who tend to be challenged by algebra and love specifics and detail. There are also those who think in patterns; they tend to be good with music and math and find reading a challenge. Finally, there are the verbally minded people who are often poor at drawing and good at recalling all sorts of facts.
Learning and Behavior Insights
It is because of the highly specific nature of her "picture" thinking that Dr. Grandin believes she is able to understand so well the behavior of horses, cattle, and other grazing animals. She contends this is so because these animals are highly visual and share with her similar physiological responses to like contextual cues.
In her work, Dr. Grandin has been able to notice and describe how animal behaviors correlate with specific visual cues in the environment. She has used this information to design procedures and stockyard enclosures that reduce stress and suffering of cattle in commercial slaughterhouse operations.
At one point during her TED talk, she explains how many non-visual thinkers have a tough time sorting out causal linkages during the root-cause analysis phase of a performance improvement effort -- sorting the people issues from the process issues, for example. Training and development and performance improvement pros: sounds a lot like Robert Mager's thinking to me. What do you think?
I know many of us more "intuitive" folks could benefit from an infusion of specific, concrete thinking, especially when designing experiments, making observations, and conducting root cause analyses.
A Few Takeaways for Educators and Learning and Development People
In order to honor a child's differences and maximize development, it's important to get children with "different" minds engaged and "turned on" early by teaching social skills, focusing on a topic they enjoy working at, and generalizing the principles and skills they have learned to other domains.
Highly visual thinkers also tend to be highly specific, bottom-up creators/learners. They benefit most from having concrete learning experiences as opposed to more theoretical, abstract approaches. Dr. Grandin points out that art, shop, science, etc. are excellent disciplines for those with strong visual gifts.
Teachers and mentors with lots of real-world experience in a domain and who have a passion for teaching can have a great positive influence on a child's development as a lifelong learner and contributor.
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) ~ Duke Ellington, music, with lyrics by Irving Mills
I saw a beautiful documentary recently called "Chops." I wept tears of joy, beauty, and elation through a good portion of it, which totally devastated my manly-man persona!
While it's not the most technically brilliant movie ever shot, I found its composition to be imperfectly/perfectly soulful, a reflection of the very essence of one of the film's main topics: expressing soulfulness through your art/craft.
The film is about a group of talented, hard-working junior high school jazz band students who graduate to a fine arts high school and eventually win entrance into the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Festival, which is a prestigious yearly jazz competition founded by Wynton Marsalis.
There's much brilliant teaching, humility, and soulful learning in the film. I especially enjoyed a scene where jazzman and music educator Ron Carter visits the students in Florida just before the competition to give them a master class intended to help them grok the essence of Ellington's music. Through a good measure of humor, wisdom, and passion for his subject, Mr. Carter teaches the students how to connect with their soulfulness and embody "swing."
Some Favorite Quotes From the Film
At the Lincoln Center, just before the competition, Wynton Marsalis holds a Q&A session. The filmmaker shows a montage of students approaching the stage and asking Marsalis a series of mundane questions. We don't see Marsalis's reply.
Then ...
Student: "My name is T.J. Norris. I go to Douglas Anderson. I play trombone. And I noticed this year I was told that the category 'soulfulness' was way [indicates an increase in level with his hands] a little more. And my question is: What’s the difference between soulfulness and church -- if there is a difference?"
Marsalis: "Here’s the difference between soulfulness and church. Now soulfulness is something that everybody has. And what that is, is soulfulness is the feeling that when I’m around you, I don’t want to leave. That’s soulfulness.
"You walk into somebody’s house, man, you want to sit down there forever. What are we doing, boss? See what I'm saying? And that’s a part of our music -- the downhome, the soul, the warm, the inviting.
"Church sometimes is that. Sometimes it don’t." [Marsalis gestures to T.J. the last part of his response -- a lovely, sweet shift in communication modality that expresses the sentiment nonverbally and confirms mutual understanding.]
In a different scene, here's what Marsalis had to say about the importance of individual expression in jazz (and learning in general) ...
“I know that from teaching kids, from elementary school to adults, the first thing that people want to know is that it’s alright to be themselves. If you’re six years old, you want to know that -- is it alright to be me? And jazz tells you, “Ya, man, that’s the thing that IS alright."
Interview With the Filmmaker
S.T. VanAirsdale, Editor, The Reeler: Now Tribecca -- as a place for a talent pool -- is also pretty formidable -- and this is a world premier here. What are you two expecting for this film, especially playing in New York where it’s Duke Ellington’s home and this is kind of where jazz is at?
Bruce Broder (filmmaker): Just hoping people like it. Like any other movie. You know? It’s a little love letter from me to the kids who play this and the teachers who teach it, and, you know, I hope that it comes across.
Does Your Work Swing?
"That's what swing is ... there's 15 of us up there, but we're one." ~ Wynton Marsalis
Throughout the film, I kept checking in with myself about ways in which I can be as passionate and connected in my work as these kids were in theirs. What an inspiration! Each moment that I learn, teach, create, and relate I want to swing. How about you? Is your work a love letter to your clients?
If you haven't seen the film, it's available for purchase on DVD. It's also instantly available on Netflix. Here's the trailer:
The Fruits of Mastery
“Master your instrument. Master your music. Then forget all that stuff and just play.” ~ Charlie Parker
Kirk Mastin, a Seattle-based photographer and filmmaker, creates a mini documentary shot with a prosumer/professional hi-definition Canon XH-A1 video camera with a little Flip video pocket camera taped to its side. He got the same shots with both cameras and edited the footage identically.
So ... just how important is "gear" for telling your story? Kirk's little experiment yields a big epiphany.
Where did Kirk's epiphany take him?
Check out Kirk's talk at FUTUROOM in Prague about how his low-fi, high-style approach to media applies to the newsrooms of the future.
“In video, the visuals drive the story. In the world of workforce learning, the job must drive the story. But the more you can visualize the job content, the better for learning. I’ve found some of the best e-Learning developers have a background in video production.“
I'd add that the best directors and film production people have a strong working knowledge of the deep structure of film. They realize how fundamental good editing is for supporting the telling of their story.
Great film editors are visual communication masters. They use their visual acuity and mastery of the medium to capture and guide the attention of the audience to realize the vision of the director.
One of the most articulate and fascinating film editors (to me, anyway) is Walter Murch. He is highly skilled at describing his creative thought processes in sensory-based -- almost operational -- terms, and he is a deep observer of human nature.
I believe that Walter Murch's insights and editing principles can help instructors use visual media more effectively to engage learners with rich, relevant content that supports natural learning processes. More specifically, instruction can be improved by consciously crafting and delivering messages through multiple sensory channels (sight and hearing) without overburdening the learner's cognitive capacity.
Emotions First
Mr. Murch is often asked to speak at film schools. During these talks, he routinely shares a list of six criteria (shown in the film clip above) that he uses to make a "good" cut -- one that delivers the expected results and doesn't call unwanted attention to itself. According to Murch, the priority of his editing criteria is often at odds with what is taught in most film schools.
In a typical editing class, Murch explains, the lessons begin with a rule he calls "three-dimensional continuity between shots," meaning that physical movements and placement of objects in three-dimensional space should carry logically from one cut to the next. For Murch, three-dimensional continuity is actually last in importance on his list of criteria.
... At the top of the list is Emotion, the thing you come to last, if at all, at film school largely because it's the hardest thing to define and deal with. How do you want the audience to feel? If they are feeling what you want them to feel all the way through the film, you've done about as much as you can ever do. What they finally remember is not the editing, not the camerawork, not the performances, not even the story -- it's how they felt. ~ Walter Murch, In the Blink of An Eye, pg. 18
Making Cuts Like Butter
To create "cuts like butter," Murch recommends that editors use six main criteria in their work, paying special attention to the top three, which he strongly recommends not be violated. The criteria appear in order of importance. Ideally, all six of them should be met.
A good cut ...
evokes the Emotion you intend;
serves to move the Story forward;
has a Rhythm that is interesting and feels right;
respects the Eye-Trace from frame to frame;
handles the questions of stage line, etc. related to the Two-Dimensional Plane of Screen; and
respects where people are in the room and their relation to one another, thus preserving the Three-Dimensional Space of Action.
Murch, W., (2001). In The Blink of An Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press.
Movies Featuring Walter Murch
Murch: Walter Murch on Editing. A documentary on Walter Murch made by his former editing assistant, Edie Ichioka. Haven't seen this one yet, but it looks fascinating. Here's a little background clip with some discussion of the film by Edie.
The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (Netflix reviews). This is an excellent documentary narrated by Kathy Bates that features interviews of top movie editors showing and talking about their work. Walter Murch is interviewed in his studio as he works and describes his thought process.
After reading thefirst post, are you starting to notice the different "cuts" (changes from one shot to the next) in the videos that you watch?
The video in the experiment below features an innovative teacher who uses video to maximize high-quality classroom learning time. In my opinion, this example demonstrates how a variety of well-composed and combined shots can enrich and support the story-telling function of video.
A Quick Learning Experiment
1. If you would, please watch the video below with the sound off. Look for the five different shots that were discussed in the first post.
Close-up (CU) on the hands
CU on the face
Wide shot (WS) of the subject performing the action
Over the shoulder
Side shot
Note any additional shots/techniques that you find interesting.
2. From your memory of the images, write a little bullet-point summary of the story.
3. Now, listen with the sound on and write another story summary.
Long Distance view of the mountains. Establishes we're in the mountains.
CU (Close-Up) of the city sign. Establishes we're in a town called Woodland Park.
CU on the face of a young man with the periodic table of the elements behind him. Now I know the topic has something to do with chemistry or science.
Full shot of two students interacting on a project [pan camera] two students writing in their notebooks and sitting on top of desks. Looks like we're in a school chemistry lab.
CU of the man (probably the teach) talking.
Over the Shoulder shot of teacher and students with goggles on in a lab working with some apparatus. Kids doing science in the lab!
CU on the face of the teacher talking.
Medium shot of the teacher standing and enumerating points on fingers. Looks like a lecture.
CU on the hand of a student working problems. Looks like home work in the classroom.
CU on the face of the teacher talking.
CU on the hands of a student accessing lesson materials on an iPod. Wow! It's an iPod in the classroom. This is unusual.
CU on the face on the teacher talking.
CU on an iPod screen in student's hand. I can see on the iPod a video of the lab. The teacher's lessons are delivered via vodcast.
CU on the face on the teacher talking
Screen shot of a screencast -- a lesson with two teachers teaching and writing on the screen. Looks like they screencast their lectures.
Wide shot of the teacher working with two students. That fellow is their teacher. Looks like high school.
CU of some students placing a crucible on a Bunson burner. Definitely chemistry or physical science.
Medium shot of the teacher standing.
CU on the face of teacher talking.
Medium shot of two students working together. Lots of student interaction.
CU on the face of teacher talking.
Over the shoulder (cross-shot) of two students working together. Even more student interaction.
CU on the face of teacher talking.
Wide shot of one student mentoring another. This kids really look like they're into learning together.
CU on the face of teacher talking.
Full shot of teaching standing between two sitting students. The teacher is spending time with the individual students or small groups.
Medium shot of students igniting some bubbles. The students are experimenting and doing things in class.
CU and zoom out of a Presidential Award plaque hanging on the wall. This guy is an innovative teacher.
CU of the teacher signing his name on a glass drawing board.
CU of the teacher's mug -- "I Teach Therefore ... [turns hand to show other side of mug] I Need Coffee." He works hard at his job!
CU of someone lighting a bubble and it floating up past a poster on the wall of famous scientists. Metaphorically, doing this kind of fun and focused work will elevate students to a level of greatness or mastery.
That's 31 cuts/shots in two minutes and 14 seconds of video, which is an average of one new shot approximately every 4 seconds. There weren't any true side shots in the bunch; however, there were lots of close-ups on the face, over the shoulders, and medium/full/wide shots.
2. Tom's Story Summary (sound off)
Innovative high school teacher in a small mountain town is teaching chemistry by using vodcasting/screencasting.
Students seem to be doing lots of experiential, collaborative learning in his classroom.
Students look fully engaged in class.
Appears that the teacher has been professionally recognized for his work as an educator.
3. Tom's Story Summary (sound on)
Verified that he's a high school teacher (Aaron Sams) whose goal is to help students learn for themselves and by themselves.
Mr. Sams has moved the delivery of content (lessons/lectures) from the classroom to the iPod/computer (video lessons), an approach he calls "flipping" the classroom. Instead of showing up to class to see a lecture, the construct is flipped so that students show up in class to apply and ask questions about the lessons they have watched at home. So, lessons are viewed at home (traditionally classroom work) and practice (traditionally homework) is conducted in the classroom.
Mr. Sams says that this "flipped" classroom allows him to interact much more with the students while they practice so he can act as a "guide, a tutor, and a putter-outer-of-fires."
4. Thoughts and Observations.
Since I'm a verbal guy by nature/nurture, I'm often surprised to learn how much information is coming in through the visual channel that I'm logging but am not consciously aware of. This story was constructed well enough visually that I felt I could have summarized what I learned from the words in one small sentence.
I think the benefits of this method (flipping) were clearly shown by the video -- one-on-one instruction, engaged students, collaborative/social learning, and meaningful classroom time.
The visuals did a nice job of conveying the affect of the people and the pace in the classroom. The editing also mirrored (or set) the pace of the place.
A variety of shots gives the editor choices for highlighting different aspects of an experience, which can potentially boost the effectiveness of the learning.
What did you learn or notice? Please do share your comments.
Kudos to the fine folks at TechSmith (creators of Camtasia) for producing this video and for helping to support and sharing innovative learning tools and practices.
The show features the passionate and opinionated British chef/restauranteur Gordon Ramsay working with restaurant owners on the brink of business failure to help them turn their businesses around.
Honestly, I had purposely stayed clear of the show because of Ramsay's mean-spirited tirades on "Hell's Kitchen." As usual, whenever my children recommend something to me, it tends to be thoughtful and valuable. Kitchen Nightmares was no exception. It turned out to be a fascinating watch and a fruitful learningexperience.
A Business Transformation Recipe
I ended up watching 6 episodes, took some process/modeling notes on the underlying structure of the show, summarized them into a one-page "recipe" format (below), and passed it to my son and some colleagues for review and discussion.
If you've been around quality management and business process re-design, you may recognize this model as the Shewhart Cycle/Deming Wheel in action.
How the Recipe Turned Around a Struggling Software Team
I shared the recipe with one of my coaching clients who directs global teams of software developers. Turns out that he's a fan of the show, and he saw an immediate application. He called in one of his teams who were struggling with a highly visible project and asked, "Have you all seen the show 'Kitchen Nightmares'"? Turns out most had. He continued, "Well, we've got a restaurant that's in trouble here, and here's a recipe we can use to get us unstuck."
The team applied the recipe and pulled off a Ramsay-styled turnaround. They saved the crucial project from a last-minute crash and burn.
My client said that the team found this model very non-threatening. They enjoyed seeing it modeled over and over again by Ramasy in another industry. Being software engineers, they easily abstracted, generalized, and applied the principles to their specific context.
How Might This Model Apply to Your Business?
Would really enjoy learning about your experiences with this recipe. Please do feel free to share your story, recommend changes, suggest other shows to model, etc. I have modeled a number of documentaries and other "reality" television shows, and I am always learning something really helpful in the process. Besides, this can move television watching from a Quadrant 4 time waster up to a productive Quadrant 2 activity (a nod to Covey fans).
Realize that this model is my hallucination of what's happening with the underlying structure of the show. Gordon Ramsay or the show's producers may have really different thoughts about what's happening. Regardless, I think the show's a brilliant learning opportunity for any business owner, OD person, etc. What do you think?
In the Rule of Thirds post, we examined the placement of the subject within the frame. Another compositional choice we can make is how close up or far away the subject appears and how much of them can be seen in the frame.
While there are infinitely many sizes that a subject can be in the frame, cinematographers, videographers, photographers, etc. have conceptually settled on 5 basic definable shot distances (Arijon, 1976): The long shot, full shot, medium shot, close shot, and the close-up shot.
This post contains an expansion of these five shots based on Joseph V. Mascelli's naming conventions. I find Mascelli's names for these shots more sensory specific than most and easier for me to remember. His shot definitions also suggest a couple of simple guidelines for dividing up the body within the frame in a way that's pleasing to the eye:
Crop the subject above or below the joints of the body. Otherwise, they may appear to have amputated limbs.
When you show the whole head, leave enough headroom to prevent the subject from appearing to be glued to the top of the frame. Also, too much headroom makes the person appear very small or like they've been driven into the ground (when you also crop the image below), which may or may not be the effect you want to create.
Shows wide areas from a great distance. Longer distance shots are often used as "establishing" shots to help the viewer understand the larger context of the scene or film.
Depicts the entire area of action, including the people and objects in the scene. Helps viewers build a mental map of the scene.
Displays the full body of the subject.
Encompasses the area from the mid to upper thigh to beyond the top of the head.
Starts just above the waist/under the arm pits and includes the full head.
Includes just under the arm pit/mid-to-upper shoulders to just beyond the top of the head.
Features the head from just above where the neck joins the body to about 1/4 from the top.
Highlights the full face, starting from the mid-throat (just below the chin) to the edge of the visible hairline.
Focuses on a particular feature of the subject.
Thanks to Great Images In NASA (GRIN) and the Apollo 16 astronauts for the photographs.
Note that shot names are still somewhat relative based on the starting shot and the person describing. For example, one person's medium shot may be another's medium close-up.
Also note that these distinctions apply regardless of the aspect ratio of the screen (4:3 TV screen or the newer 16:9 widescreen).
References
Arijon, D., (1976). Grammar of the Film Language. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press.
Mascelli, J., (1998). The Five C's of Cinematography. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press.
Several brands of digital cameras on the market today have viewfinder grid display settings that divide the window into thirds, which makes practicing the Rule of Thirds a breeze. If you don't own such a camera, a simple way to practice is to copy the image below (a 16:9 frame divided into thirds) and paste it into a presentation program like PowerPoint/Keynote or some photo editing software. Then copy a digital photo into the software and superimpose the grid on top of the picture. Expand and move the picture around underneath the grid to place key elements of the image in the intersecting lines.
Here it is in PowerPoint ...
Like any rule, it's great to know how and when it can be applied, and it's a simple way for novices to create compositions that are pleasing to the eye -- or at least not offensive to the eye.
However, maybe your intention is to create an image that is unsettling, offensive, or exaggerated. Don't let this "rule" stifle your creativity or your ability to communicate what you intend. Learn the rule ... internalize it ... violate it to great effect!
"An amazingly simple yet extremely effective principle that Alfred Hitchcock shared with François Truffaut during the writing of Truffaut's Hitchcock/Truffaut states that the size of an object in the frame should be directly related to its importance in the story at that moment." ~ Gustavo Mercado, the filmmaker's eye
Andrew David Watson directed, shot, and edited the following documentary for Etsy about Adam Cramer's Philadelphia motorcycle shop called "Liberty Vintage Motorcycles." Watson does a lovely job of changing the size of subjects in the frame (among many other techniques) to develop and propel the story. As you watch the film, think "cigarettes" and tail pipes.
