Critical Practice in Film and
Video Pedagogy
Critical Practice Pedagogy
1. The role of practice in teaching and
learning
2. Working with the ‘media savvy’ nature of
contemporary students
3. The Critical Practice model
4. Integration of theory and practice is a
method for viewing key moments of film
history
1: Kolb learning cycle (for
example)
Concrete Experience
Active Experience Reflective Observation
Abstract Conceptualisation
Critical Practice Pedagogy
• Engaging different learning styles
• Relating the experiential to the abstract
• Allowing for different levels of cognitive
engagement
• Acknowledging what students already know
about media practice
2: “Media Savvy” Students
• Students already engaged in media practice
– Participants in various forms of media
communication from snapshots to Youtube
• Increasing access to technologies
• Students already theorise media
3: Levels of Engagement with
Critical Practice
• Teaching practice students through the
critical practice model
• Incorporating practice techniques within
film studies teaching
• Teaching students informed by practice
• Teaching with an awareness of Critical
Practice in film traditions
Theory-Practice Continuum
• Overcoming the Historical/Institutional
structures which have traditionally
separated theory from practice
– Mind/Body Split
– Class division of labour
– Art SchoolAcademic TheoryVocational
Training
• Concept of “integration” - the productive
relationship between these two areas
Mike Wayne’s Taxonomies
• Reflexive Practitioner
– Can interrogate production process
• Theoretical Practitioner
– Can identify the relationship between choices
and creation of meaning
• Critical Practitioner
– Can interrogate the politics of meaning
Developing on from this
• Critical Practice
– Awareness of the construction of meaning
• Theorised Practice
– Students can situate their practice within terms
of ideology
• Reflection on Practice
– Can engage with and theorise their own
practice
Theoretically Informed Creative
Work
• Work that explores the complexities of
meaning-making
• How image-making systems create
knowledge
• Work that is aware of its position in
ideological constructions
• Research common factor - presentation of
research varies
Practice informed theory
• Role of theory to move from a passive to an
active media engagement
• Participation in practice demystifies the
process
• Introduces experience into theoretical
discussion
• Raises the question of the ‘author’
– Aware of conscious decision-making in creative
process
– Rebalances questions of intent
Goals and Objectives in theory
practice pedagogy
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Gives students common language
The process of criticism/critique discussion
Encourages theoretically informed work
Theory encourages experimentation in practice
Theoretical process places student’s work within
its cultural context
• Positions techniques within context
• Engaged theory
Theory-Practice Examples for the
Classroom
• Incorporating production experiences
– Shot Compositions
• Interrogating the theoretical constructs of subject
identification through camera placement
– Exquisite corpse exercise
• Film language and editing in constructing meaning
– Recontextualization
4: Theorist-Practitioners
• Examples where filmmakers make films
and write theoretically
• Movements/Styles of Film produce models
of Critical Practice:
– Soviet Montage, French New Wave, Third
Cinema, Avant-Garde
• Practice as Theory
– Explore ways in which film texts themselves
theorise