Back To Basics: Avoid The Darkness and Stay Out Of The Light
I wish students had to know the pain of shooting an entire roll of film to find out none of the images were usable. I wish they could understand the pain of being excited about pictures to find out they are too dark, too bright, blurry or out of focus… but at the same time, I’m pretty happy living where we are right now. Instant feedback makes teaching so much easier. Understanding and knowing how to manipulate exposure is something that when mastered takes the video production game to the next level.
I tried a thousand ways to teach the concept of exposure. Lessons in exposure led to a couple of my most humbling moments in the classroom. The first, I thought a student wasn’t paying attention so I did the awful thing of “YOU teach it…” He did and he did it well - probably better than I did.
The other humbling moment was a real roller coaster of emotions. During the spring semester, I expressed to my students that I truly had no idea how a camera makes light into files on an SD card. It was magic to me. I shared with them that it didn’t matter as long as I knew the magic came from good exposure. Then in a stroke of genius, I went on a tangent with a magic rabbit that eats light. It is happy with just the right amount of food. Too little food and it’s sad and grumpy… I feverishly drew clouds on the board with a sad rabbit. Too much food and it’s all over the place and you can’t see the rabbit… I attempted to draw a rabbit covered in too much light (let that one sink in). The kids got it. They knew what was going on. I told them that the shutter speed was how fast the rabbit’s arm could move, the aperture was the size of the spoon and ISO was how hungry the rabbit was. I thought I had it made. I had cracked the code.
Then the fall came…. I was all excited because I spent the summer working on it and getting it ready and I was going to make heads explode with excitement because they knew camera exposure and how to make it happen…. I was quickly humbled as these kids had no idea what I was talking about. I knew I lost them when someone said “what does this have to do with rabbits?”
Unfortunately, for some it’s easy while others may never understand it. The biggest thing that I found that helped was to ask if the students knew the difference between the look of a movie and that of a TV show. They ALWAYS say the movies have “… that…. that…. look where everything is blurry.” That usually hooks them when I tell them that I can teach them the difference and how to get that look (now the Iphone does it but with a filter so they aren’t as interested but give them a real camera to do this assignment).
Take that lesson, make it your own, and dominate that exposure game with your students!
Meet the Author, Tom White
"Tom White is the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events. Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018. Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast. "
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