Summary:
Inside the classroom of a high
school in Berea, Ohio lie ferocious, drooling beasts with sharp claws and
fangs; but it’s nothing to fear for they belong in the classroom. Berea High School has a class in Visual Effects
and Design where students collaborate on and create masks, props, characters
and sculptures for independent films, private collectors, plays, etc. It’s a class far beyond the concept of
art. It goes into correlating art and
something based on the real world where the students can get excited about
their work. It still keeps those same
qualities students would get from a basic art class such as drawing, painting,
color mixing, balance, 3-D objects, etc.
But now, those objects get a purpose through moviemaking as the subject
matter. Although art is normally the
first area to receive budget cuts, the program takes paying gigs for producing
items and labor to pay for their program to keep running. This, along with grants, a student yearly fee
and donations help the class survive and get supplied in the day to day
classroom.
There are a lot of skeptics and
negative comments being thrown towards the program saying that if it wasn’t for
the morbid attraction of today’s “CSI watchers”, this program wouldn’t
exist. And while students know that they
aren’t there to “make fairies”, they still defend their trade in the maturity
and development skills that are needed to create such masterpieces and
professional pieces such as problem solving.
These high school students even collaborate with mid-career
professionals in engineering, multimedia and graphic design. This professional connection is a powerful
classroom tool in order to prepare students through a vocational focus. The instructor never expects the students to
be great artists when they leave the program; his underlying goal is to make them
creative problem solvers.
Response:
This article provided a lot of
key points as to the possible positives and negatives to this program. I don’t think that those naysayers are giving
enough credit to the student’s maturity level in high school; especially in
context of students actually interested in the vocation. Blood and guts is a part of special effects
and the students see it as a challenge to accomplish a realistic scene…not the
need for blood and guts. And I am glad
that the teacher is not striving for the students to become fantastic artists
but to become comfortable problem solvers.
Especially when you see the students working with other professionals in
the field, you see the students leaving their comfort zones in order to
accomplish these tasks.
I think that this class is
great; I love the school’s ability to attach a high school topic that is
normally tied to just what it stated: a basic art class such as drawing,
painting, color mixing, balance, etc.
Tying these normal practices of art to an actual profession makes it
more appeasing to the students and more practical. This is especially true for those students
that do not see themselves going onto college or are not able to go to
college. A $30 student fee is a lot more
feasible than a $1000 college program (being generous with class price even). Providing those opportunities for students is
powerful to their future development into adulthood and creating a career path
for themselves. Even if it does not
include special effects, it allows the students to develop themselves and
become responsible adults.
APA Citation:
Bernard, S.
(2008, January 10). Monster mash: Learning real-world skills in creature-creating
art
class. Retrieved from
http://www.edutopia.org/classroom-special-effects-studio
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