HIGH SCHOOL

Angelina, One Moment video poem stills.

Tim Needles

How does the act of painting make you feel? This is a question I ask students when we begin our video poetry unit. We use this and other prompts to inspire short expressive poems and prose that can develop and evolve into multifaceted media artworks. The tactile act of applying colorful layers of paint on a canvas is the perfect reference point to bridge the gap between the experience of traditional art-making and the evolving world of media art.

This video poem lesson is a personal favorite and one I chose to include in my book STEAM Power because it allows for creative innovation, it’s flexible when collaborating with other subjects, and adaptable as I’ve done it with various high- and low-tech tools. I’ve also incorporated it into a range of learning environments with students from kindergarten to college, and the work as well as the process is always interesting.

The editing process is when the work takes shape—it requires students to make creative choices that often invite happy accidents

We begin with short creative writing exercises based on a series of ideas, questions, images (artworks work well), and sounds, then students share their work and choose pieces to turn into visual artworks. As we move into the visual stage, I choose the tools and media based on student competency and interests and add a challenge by incorporating a limitation into the project.

I find adding limitations will often have the counterintuitive effect of facilitating creative risk-taking, so I incorporate it into the process in various ways. The limitation could be as simple as setting a time limit on using a tool students aren’t familiar with, in which case I remind them that their lack of knowledge brings a strength in originality. Ultimately, the work will become a video, but students can begin creating their visuals with still images, collages, or drawings and edit them together. I like to remind students to interpret the writing in whichever visual form seems most fitting and interesting and to experiment with different approaches in the process and not get fixed on one approach.

Mia, video poem stills.

Once we have visuals, students begin the third phase of editing them together into a finished video poem. The classroom and situation will often dictate which editing tools we use, but video poems have been created with tools as simple as a smartphone to more complex video editing tools using desktop computers.

A new tool which I find immensely useful in creating video poems is Adobe Spark because it is free, it works on any device (even a Chromebook), and is easy to use to edit video or images and share work. Students can add audio, narration, animated text, and visual effects at this stage that help make the work come to life.

As with most film and video work, the editing process is when the work takes shape—it requires students to make creative choices that often invite happy accidents. Different approaches can be selected as alternatives to the ones students had in mind. It induces students to have an open mind. This part of the journey also requires more structure in terms of offering technical support, encouraging students to work together in groups to problem-solve and support one another.

I always begin by modeling the process and sharing a video tutorial so students can check back if they forget elements. While I share the technical process, I don’t want students to mimic my creative process. Mixing in various other video poem examples that incorporate different styles and techniques allows students to make more personal and creative decisions.

The next step is the reflective stage in which students share rough edits of their video poems and we critique them together. We incorporate different tools such as: verbal feedback, written notes using online tools, and collaborative remixes so more students share input and work together. When the pieces are complete, we conclude by sharing the work, not just with the class but with the school and online community through social media.

April is National Poetry Month, so it’s a great time to share and celebrate the work. This event also offers numerous resources from organizations such as Poets.org and the Poetry Foundation, and there are also terrific examples of video poems from the former poet laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, and the PBS series The United States of Poetry. This project has allowed my students to express themselves in new ways with media art, which often leads to creative breakthroughs thanks to working in a different medium and gaining a new perspective.

Tim Needles is an art teacher at Smithtown High School East in St. James, New York. tneedles@smithtown.k12.ny.us
Video Poetry