Thank you for the advice/insights, Dave! And also everyone else that has contacted me on and off list.
My school is in a rural area, just a few miles down the road from where Sling Blade was shot. One of the students identifies as autistic, but I'm assuming that's just because it's a more commonly understood blanket term for being on the spectrum. Another is undiagnosed but has a similar condition/personality to the Billy Bob Thornton character in the movie. (Not to make light of this, but just to paint a picture.) And we have a mix of more common community college students also. For anyone following the thread, I wanted to mention that it's been going much better and I had a bit of a breakthrough in my last class. My most socially handicapped student doesn't have a home computer, and was struggling with just the basics of how windows work, etc. Once we got the editing system set up, I showed him some bare bones basic editing maneuvers and then went on to help other students around the room. About twenty minutes later he beckons me over by pointing at his screen. And to my utter shock, he had already cut together a found footage movie that would give Bruce Conner goosebumps. Poetic, artful, and incorporating all of the elements of editing that we discussed in class. I'm a fairly stoic critic, but was totally floored. Now, a couple of the others are still getting the hang of things, but this was quite a revelation. I'm excited with what they're all able to come up with. On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 6:42 PM Dave Tetzlaff <djte...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dan: > > I assume if your students are enrolled in a college class, they’re at the > end of the spectrum formerly called Aspergers. > > I once had such a student in a documentary production class. (Alas I > learned this ‘the hard way’ as he was apparently undiagnosed and his > parents in denial. But I have a young cousin with the condition, and it > became pretty obvious what was up.) Anyway, it was largely unpredictable > how his neuro-atypicality would affect his classwork. > > Our first assignment was a fairly straightforward interview piece, and he > showed something that had a disturbing subtext of which he was completely > unaware, which was apparently completely accidental, and which he seemed > incapable of understanding was problematic, despite the fact every other > member of the class was wincing. Folks with ASD tend to be very literal, > and struggle with any kind of metaphor, and with the first piece as > evidence, I worried about what he’d do with the second assignment – a more > impressionistic ‘experimental’ doc short. To my surprise he showed a very > moving piece that used objects and film technique to figuratively represent > the kind of heightened sense perception a lot of ASD folks get from certain > industrialized environmental stimuli and the mental agitation thatb results… > > My advice, based on this very admittedly limited experience, is that you > shouldn’t alter your assignments, but rather just be sensitive to how a > different sort of person will address them, and do what you can to ensure > that the rest of the class will treat the work and the maker > sympathetically. As for the students themselves, I’d probably just > re-double the advice I’d give any student: make your projects about > something you know and really care about – make them in some way > ‘personal’. Most students are afraid to go there, even indirectly, and too > willing to take the route of superficially imitating some form they like or > feel is somehow validated. My admittedly corny maxim was “Your work won’t > be any good unless you put yourself into it, and it won’t get any better > unless you can take yourself out of it (in evaluation afterwards…)” > > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks >
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