Creating Video Vignettes to Enhance Urban Design Learning

Most classroom instruction related to urban geography and design relies heavily on static photographic images that highlight form, but don’t necessarily engage the idea of function. Because of the relative ease of digital video editing and the portability of high-definition digital video cameras, using instructor-collected video in the classroom is less-demanding than in the past. This paper highlights how short video vignettes can better elucidate urban concepts and explains best practices in crafting educational objectives and professional video products. DOI: 10.4018/jagr.2012100107 124 International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, 3(4), 123-134, October-December 2012 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. city (Knox & McCarthy, 2005), the idea of function can be quite nebulously be inferred by the observer. Function is defined as how people interact with urban form (Calthorpe & Fulton, 2001). How do people interact with the built environment? This depth of learning yearns for the capabilities of film. Students in today’s classroom are expecting more media options because their lives are more significantly influenced by media of various kinds including: television, computer, music/audio devices, video games, and movies. In a 2009 study of 8-18 year olds in the United States, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that each youth, on average, engages in some form of media for 10 hours and 45 minutes each day (Kaiser Foundation, 2011). This figure has significantly risen from the 7 hours and 29 minute average in 1999. These are the students that largely populate traditional classrooms on the campus of colleges and universities. By better integrating classroom material with the cultural interests of students, instructors are more likely to find pedagogic successes. This media infiltration in the classroom cannot simply be satisfied by the use of PowerPoint presentations and animation features within that program environment. The current student population is hungering for more media and more creative forms of media within the classroom (Gardner, Jewler, & Barefoot, 2011). Film is certainly not a new pedagogical tool in the geography classroom. Film clips from feature films, television shows, and internet portals have added detail, humor, and cultural credibility to many learning environments. In a U.S. & Canada class, I use short, often humorous, film clips from YouTube to help introduce or enhance the sense of place for certain regions. In my advanced urban planning courses, I seek to use similar video snippets, but I have great difficulty finding suitable material. It was not difficult finding films that illustrate the great skyline of Manhattan and the busy sidewalks of the Theater District, but putting those film clips together with a narrative about urban typology and population density would be ideal. Ideally, I could evocatively describe places like Ben Marsh (1987) does regarding the anthracite region in Pennsylvania or Jon Goss (1999) whose humorous yet brilliant commentary on the Mall of America remains an interesting read even for undergraduate students. However, I am a more visual than verbal being, so the solution is for me to create my own videos highlighting aspects of urban design that are not readily apparent in my local college town, specifically showing people engaging built environments to provide students with a better understanding of function within the urban landscape. I created five place-based videos for my urban design class specifically highlighting the functional aspects of design and how people engage their surrounding built environments. This paper explains the process, some technical hints for video capture and production, how to craft objectives and shot lists to encourage confidence in crafting similar video projects. LEARNING FOUNDATIONS As Carl Sauer noted in 1956 about geographic education and scholarship, we should not, “limit ourselves to what is visually conspicuous, but we do try to register both detail and composition of the scene, finding in it questions, confirmations, items or elements that are new” (Sauer, 1956, p. 289). Film allows for deeper exploration in landscape morphology, process, and even pattern (Zonn, 1984). Geographers may not have utilized film as much because of its close connection with the humanities rather than the sciences. Rather than treating the humanities as barren ground for geography, we might view film, television, and music as beneficial methods of evoking meaning and sense of place within the cultural landscape (Meinig, 1983). This is changing, however, as the “spatial turn” in cultural studies and a sharper focus on visual media incorporates the role of space and place in representational theory and identity formation (Lukinbeal, 2004). A hallmark of geographic education is learning about unfamiliar places. Using film to establish a sense of place for a city and to connect material about the natural or 10 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/creating-video-vignettes-enhanceurban/70662?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Engineering, Natural, and Physical Science. 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