The necessity of teaching video composition

John Jones — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:58:05 +0000

A few weeks ago I suggested that the seeming ineptness of many amateur videos indicates that most people are more skilled at textual production than at video production. William Saletan’s piece at Slate on video resumes got me thinking about this topic again. While the popularity of non-commercial videos on youtube argues that our culture is in many ways already video-literate, it is likely that the youtube community is self-selecting for video-savvy individuals. However, Heather Havrilesky’s recent review of Donald Trump’s Apprentice implies that there is a lack of awareness of a broader audience in that group, as well. Since we are near a point when video production will be as ubiquitous as text composition, it will soon become necessary for training everyone in video composition. If this is the case, I think it is likely that a huge part of the training in the rhetoric of video communication will be left to composition departments.

Technological innovations like Apple’s iSight camera, which now comes standard with all of its laptops, will soon put this technology in the hands of everyone with a computer. Returning to the Saletan piece, he provides a fairly inclusive list of pros and cons for video resumes, which, for the purposes of this conversation, can be summed as: everyone is going to start providing video resumes, so you need to as well. If videos are going to be a requirement for job-hunters, who will give students a rhetoric for creating these videos, the topoi that they should cover (or clichés they should avoid), and techniques for presenting themselves to their audience other than composition departments?

Eventually someone is going to have to create a video rhetoric for classroom use. Those of you who are more familiar with film studies might be able to suggest works in that field that already do this. I think the first step towards brining this conversation into the classroom would be assigning student videocasts. Blogging Pedagogy has had some interesting discussions on podcasts, and I think that assignments like this one by John Pedro Schwartz could easily be adapted for students with cameras in their laptops. Any thoughts on other videocast assignments?

viz. - video rhetoric

The necessity of teaching video composition