Working in a kitchen

All our best projects seem to start on kitchen tables - and then sometimes move onto the floor.  Today we've been blocking out the different weeks of the course.  The big shift has been from thinking of one assignment per week, building up to a big finale dream project in week 10, to seeing that that's mad and that the last 4 weeks of the course can be pre-production, production, post-production and some space for reflection, with teaching and research thrown in.

Given week 1 is an introduction and needs to cover some basic ground like rights and even down to attaching a camera to the computer for the first time, that leaves three weeks for one-off projects with more and more creative control being passed over to students, and then a 2 week on-location or on-set shoot - preparation and then what we've called "A taste of chaos.

All the way along the balance is to give enough structure to make things easy and pick up on the teaching points we want to make, while allowing students the excitement of taking control and achieving something they feel good about in a reasonable time.  Years of face to face workshops on Ricks part and thinking about distance teaching on mine is being married up to try and make that work.  Next week we'll have a first go at convincing other people that what comes of marching around a kitchen might work in 500 homes and offices twice a year for 4 years.