Mark Reid
I've been working at the BFI in London for over 20 years, looking after a range of education programmes and projects. Before that I taught in schools in south London as an English and Media teacher.
Location UK
Activity
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Hi @Antoinette-RoseDartigues the films arent downloadable I'm afraid - we son't have the rights to do that. but you can keep the link and use/ watch them whenever you like!
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hello everyone, sorry about the Padlet - it works now, and you can find many 1 minute films made by previous learners on the course!
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Hi Mathilde, I meant direct message, but I think just replaying to my message works! I’ll see what we’ve got in the way of descriptions of shots etc
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hello everyone, and welcome to the course! I have to start by saying that because he course is ‘always open’, we can’t moderate as consistently as when it ran for 6 week blocks. We hope to dip in and out, but if you need an answer to a specific question, you can DM me through the course, and I get a notification
Otherwise, enjoy, and share between...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hello everyone, and welcome to the course! We have to point out that because the course is now ‘always open’, we won’t be able to moderate as consistently as before. But please feel free to communicate with each other - and I think if you need an answer to a specific question, you can DM me, and I get a notification to come and see your query. In the...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Two comments about the importance of ‘context’, which we can use to build on Critical and Cultural - that both should include ‘context’ as preconditions for successful learning, critically and culturally.
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Mark Reid made a comment
is nobody going to disagree with the claims? not even for a bit of fun?!
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Mark Reid replied to Andy Bourne
@AndyBourne we like to think so! but actually just the experience of something different, in a different environment can make the difference
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Mark Reid replied to Alice Lockwood
@AliceLockwood really interesting observation Alice! the experience of watching a film as opposed to the nature of the film itself..
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Mark Reid made a comment
I admit I was surprised when the girls talked about how they watch films, but then I realise I often go on my tablet when the TV is on, or I’m ‘watching’ a film. Sometimes we’re not so different as adults as we think we are!
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hello everyone, welcome to the course! We hope you all find ideas and inspiration here. Don’t forget that often the most interesting perspectives come from your colleagues on the course - already we have Jakarta, Bangladesh, UK, and the Netherlands represented! So use your colleagues for their ideas and views and experiences
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Hello @HiroOda, the great thing about the letter ‘C’ (in English) is that so many great useful words begin with the letter! So yes, ‘co-operation’ can be a fourth C - and many more!
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Mark Reid replied to John Rogers
It’s certainly worth bearing in mind that caution, @JohnRogers, that often young people give you the kind of answers they think you’re looking for. But I think hey we’re genuinely taken with some of the films they saw that week - especially Waves: https://youtu.be/V5z3cr8AB5g
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Mark Reid replied to Carrie Slinn
Hi @CarrieSlinn, yes, it was filmed in the order you see it. I don’t know if it was laziness on my part, or the fact that as you say, there’s a progression in their answers. They were certainly very good interviewees - I couldn’t have predicted what they came up with, or how complementary their answers were to each other.
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Mark Reid replied to zara barton
Great suggestion @zarabarton - is your film club for your peers, or for children/ young people? And has it gone online?
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Mark Reid replied to Birgit Buttler
Hi @birgit, I’m sure you’ll find things here to inspire!
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone - especially those joining since the beginning of June. We’re not popping regularly to the course any more, but I’ll come in every so often, as we’re open (as part of support during lockdowns) into July. Good to see people still signing in, and I hope you enjoy it.
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Mark Reid replied to John Rogers
Hi @JohnRogers how long ago did you work at the NFT? Who do you remember? And which Library do you programme at? Good to have you on board - Girl Chewing Gum - great choice!
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Mark Reid made a comment
A belated welcome to our new arrivals! Very pleased to see so many colleagues from Scotland joining - thank you @ScottDonaldson, and to AMES, for promoting the course! Welcome to French colleagues too! The course started on March 23rd, so the tutors will be tuning in less regularly than we have been previously, but we'll still check in now that we know more...
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He also says somewhere else that a good guide to the 'impact' of a learning experience is whether the child goes away and does/ looks at/ reads/ enquires about something else as a result; 'education should an uncovering, not a covering.'
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Mark Reid made a comment
One thing I love about this activity is the fact that no two summaries are the same; in fact, if you look at the opening lines, even the opening three words, none are identical. I think this is really important for reinforcing how difference is just as important as consensus - in life, school, politics. In fact, is difference more important? So much of school...
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Mark Reid replied to Linda Byrd
@LindaByrd this is almost a poem!
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Mark Reid replied to Eduardo Mórlan
hi @EduardoMórlan - we weren't thinking of past tense narration, more the physical image of something from the past, that intrudes in the present.
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Mark Reid replied to Eduardo Mórlan
@EduardoMórlan i'm just replying because i emember how great True Detective is! But also, Sliding Doors and tenses - the conditional tense? (or modality? I'm not great on grammar..)
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Mark Reid made a comment
thanks for your ideas and suggestions everyone! And like many of you, i couldn't see an examle of 'summary'. In short films, the time frame tends to be 'scene', close to real time, and unity of time, place, and action (if you're into Aristotle!) @lindabyrd prompted an idea to re-write the scenario in a target language, and a different culture - especially...
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Mark Reid replied to Linda Byrd
Hi @LindaByrd - an idea: rewrite the film scenario in Mexico! One for students to do in target language (English? Spanish?) - and they can also adapt to local cultural norms. And no, i don't think there's a summary sequence in the film. usually, in a short film, it's more or less scene, ie in real time.
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Mark Reid replied to Shona Richards
Hi @ShonaRichards Pause is literally when the 'story time' of the film is paused - if this bit is where we cut to the credits, it might be a pause - unless we cut back to the action and time has passed, in which case it's an ellipsis. 'Pause' is the trickiest one!
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yes, sometimes we need to be 'distracted' from films cutting out time or space. Music is often used to 'bridge' a cut like this.
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Hello everyone
We've put a link to a short survey in this step, and the next one, to get some sense of how the course worked for you. The link is here: <https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7F25NDP> - it's anonymous, optional, and we can't track any personal data from it. it should take 5 minutes. thanks! -
Hi @RonaldoMiranda - i think it was a sequence of lessons, an hour long, probably for a week. But they will have done three or four of those sequences throughout the year. It was all in the past, when the English govt accepted that film was a legimitate part of literacy. We still see practice like that - in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and in pockets of...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Amazing responses! After 4 weeks, we have roughly 450 film titles listed, and only 5 that i can see come up more than once: The Kid (5 mentions); Goodbye Lenin (3); He Named Me Malala and The Weekend (2) and.. A Clockwork Orange! All of which goes to show.. what?!
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it does indeed @SelvenNaidu - but i guess we were interested in tsking apart those wider cultural conceptions of flm a little, to see which apsects or themes people were really interested in.
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hi @KittyBRussell - this migt be because we didn't reach so many people in the industry in the survey. Nonetheless, in education, there's a view that wider educational benefits include employability, rather than industry bein a special and different case.
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And good to see you too @ScottDonaldson!
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Hi @AlinaTrewhitt ! you make a fair point: the survey is naturally skewed by the people who answered, and they were people who work in the sector, internationally. A different survey group - of teachers and learners - would be fascinating and maybe guide our policy in a different direction. A bit like the idea (in the previous step) of asking young people...
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@MarinaG I share your pain, about film not being studied for itself. Still, when young people come to our cinemas, and watch a film in a different language, from a different place and country, they are still accessing some of what makes film uniquely powerful. We never, or rarely, choose films that merely 'deliver' other content - we want children and...
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Mark Reid replied to Megan Crawford
@MeganCrawford it's a fine line, and you do lose something when you bring up the lights, and ask children questions; they quite reasonably prefer the immersion - and so do many of the members in our cinemas!
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that's a lovely example @AnnaKołodziejczak! even if you don't have the interviewee in the cinema, you can Skype them, and have them on screen, answering questions. We've done this in Spanish events, with both Fernando Trueba and icier Bollain!
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Hi @KarlinaS - I don't know if it comes across in the video at the top of this step, but we do manage to have group work, pair work, and creative work in a cinema - even in our largest, 450-seat NFT1! though time is ALWAYS limited!
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@ClaireM what if the film isn't a film of a book - can it work on its own terms?
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Mark Reid made a comment
From a film point of view, it’s always interesting how we (and children, ditto?) only imagine animations go with ‘cartoon sound’ -the influence of Disney etc again. We use lists of animations that feature live action, naturalistic sound, to broaden the range of film children experience.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Lots of great ideas and insights - I like the idea of cutting the soundtrack to another set of images - or filming something on a phone that would also go with the sounds. 'Ripping' the sound off a film is relatively easy, if you can get it in iMovie - or find a free piece of software online. Rights are Ok so long as you do it for your own interest, or in a...
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Mark Reid replied to Johanna Pohland
hi @JohannaPohland! i think with the cultural we're thinking that a broader range of film - from more than just the usual suspects (Hollywood) - will deepen young people's experience and understanding of film - and of the world in general. It's not an argument that has to be made with other artforms, as there is no equivalent to the Hollywood film industry...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Great to see these opening comments still creating debate! i still like Bazalgette's claim though - mostly because film rarely (in the UK anyway) gets credit as an artform, rather than an entertainment medium..
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Mark Reid made a comment
Great to see people still joining - welcome Carlo, Justine, Renata, Selven, Julia, Francisca! As the course progresses, the educators tend to focus on later weeks, but we occasionally remember to check in on the earlier steps.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Well done everyone who got on the padlet; there are 40 profiles on there! https://padlet.com/TheLivingPictureCraze/6pf40cpo30nj
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Mark Reid replied to Sophie Blewitt
and also, note how students are more comfortable making inferences from images and from film, than they are from poetry, for example. Why might this be?
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Mark Reid replied to Caroline Pepper
@CarolinePepper actually, how much do we KNOW?! the more I look, the less certain I am.. that's why inferences are so valuable - they reveal the cultural basis behind so many of the judgements we make about people - which is what the film is going to be about..
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone, and thank you for your detailed comments and inferences. I had forgotten how much i love this film! The detail is so rich, and full of portent, of potential significance. I just watched it again and like @AlietteDanielo the guy's tie struck me. Is there something just too flashy about it? If i were dressing the character, i would have chosen...
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Mark Reid replied to Muriel Huet
Hi @EmmaC. We're not sure what happened here; it looks like a quiz from a different online course! I'll investigate.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Yes, sorry everyone about the download function not working, but you can use the Vimeo link, it won't go away after the course ends, and as Muriel says, there are lots of clip grab apps for free. and an NB on 'GCSE', which is the high-school qualification children take in the UK (but not Scotland) at 16. I didn't know there was a photocard exercise in the...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Great comments from people, especially your inferences and guesses about the food! @LisaStevens you're going to be sadly disappointed about the Bircher Muesli!
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Mark Reid made a comment
It’s interesting that so many people hear a Disney world! It shows us how successfully Disney has infiltrated the global imagination. From just a few bars of music, so may of us are transported to the same place!
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Mark Reid replied to Marta Guerreiro
Hi @MartaGuerreiro, the transcript only has one line, that ‘lyrical romantic music is playing’ - because that’s the only thing happening on the soundtrack.
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Yes, @PhoebeClementine, the addition of sound certainly helps us ‘see’ more, and more clearly!
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Mark Reid replied to Eduardo Mórlan
Hi Eduardo, yes, in other countries we have audio description on DVD - and on TV. You’re right, it’s an under-used teaching tool.
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Mark Reid replied to Jodie Whitehurst
Lovely idea Jodie!
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Anna, it’s a wonderful choice, beautiful and clear, even without English subtitles. Muratova is so hard to find in English, I am very grateful to you for showcasing it - it’s a great ‘shown/ hidden’ film!
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People could also try one of her shorts: Gasman, which is so tightly framed (and has a powerful secret at its heart) that it’s almost a perfect ‘shown/hidden’ film: https://www.nowness.com/series/directors-cuts/gasman-lynne-ramsay
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Hi Megan, in a way, your written description of your Lumiere Minute is an ideal version of your imagined film, that an actual filmed version could never live up to! Another dimension of the Lumiere Minute is to capture the ‘accidental’ in real life, so another way of writing your film would be to choose your angle, frame, and moment, and then describe what...
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Hi Carmen, it’s a fascinating - and discomfiting - piece! I can feel the shock of the ‘bounce’ on my body! Breaking it down into its abstract elements, and then building them back into new films is a great approach - without any narrative distraction. I think I’ll try this out myself!
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Hi @KarlinaS, I also empathise with your ‘horror of being creative’! It seems so high risk, high stakes, as though your whole identity is on the line! I think this is partly because of the high premium put on creativity in society today, and also because in education, we get to be creative so rarely. The Cinémathèque programme I think responds to both of...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone, I’ve replaced the padlet page, it should be working now - sorry!
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We use Rohde mics, which come with fluffies, for around 50E. And plastic holders for iPad minis called Iographer: https://www.iographer.com/
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Mark Reid replied to Mateja Voh
Hi Mateja, you can read the transcript (it,s just below the Task, and above the comments).
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Thanks Natalie; noted for when we revise the course
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Mark Reid replied to Alison Elmslie
I think lots of us agree here: children tend to learn not to like things; the ‘difficulty’ of abstract art is culturally learned, not automatic or natural
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Mark Reid made a comment
All those comments about watching two films at once reminds me: the film artist Douglas Gordon made an installation of two films projected, either side of the same screen: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/102420. The Exorcist and Song of Bernadette!
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hello! People keep joining the course every day, so we are delighted to keep welcoming you all, that’s 254 people saying hi to each other so far, from all over the world! And all here to share experience and learn about film education!
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Mark Reid replied to Scott Donaldson
Hey there! @ScottDonaldson
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Hi Eduardo - the copyright only covers whether you make the extracts available online afterwards. Anything you do in a classroom, for teaching purpose only, is usually exempt from copyright
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Mark Reid replied to Virginie Rousvoal
Yes, for lots of TL activities, I guess you have to scaffold according to the level of your students
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Hi Aliette, have a look at the pdf and see if it’s clearer; if not, post again with a specific question - it helps us understand if a resource isn’t clear to everyone.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Do people know Kogonada’s work? I saw this a few years ago in a gallery - but it’s just as suited to YouTube, and is literally a ‘horizontal pedagogy’ of the extract (or clip?). He structures it carefully, down to the climax with the crying women... so instructive, without words. He’s a great critic! https://vimeo.com/157221223
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone
This step appears to have generated some quite different responses! I can see what some of you mean about whether the teacher should talk about ‘story’ and ‘meaning’ before technical terms. What in fact she does (http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/1660) is introduce the film’s story as a mystery, by hanging a red velvet rope from the ceiling in her... -
Mark Reid replied to Carmen Beckenbach
Carmen, if I could ‘like’ this more than once I would! The sensory dimension of cinema is crucial, and overlooked. I’ll more and more thinking it’s what makes film unique. In Week 3 you will be introduced to Cinema cent ans de jeunesse - a big international programme that this year is looking at ’sensory cinema’.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone
A few people have picked up on this idea of the ‘cultural’ C. I think of it having two dimensions, looking two ways: the new cultures of cinema that young don’t yet know about (in UK we often call art film ‘cultural cinema’)n but also for us to recognise g people, and actually children, have their own ‘cultures’, or ‘cultural habitus’. Just...
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Hi Nina! I think what Cary was getting at isn’t so much the technology, or the medium connected to film, but the language of the moving image itself - wherever children see it, on phones, tablets, TV.. the moving image itself is pretty consistent as a form whether it’s on a phone or a big screen - sound, picture, time. And ‘the first one that we learn (on...
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Mark Reid made a comment
H everyone, interesting views listed here already: Anja you'll see later in the course (Week 3 and 4) we talk about work with young children, and have some examples of more experimental films: why do younger children respond so well? And Serj, on parody, i remember an academic asking 'if we have The Simpson, do we need media education?' Diego, some of us...
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Mark Reid made a comment
Interesting.. even among 11 people, there are a range of different priorities. Like the respondents to the original survey, the answers depend on where you're coming from: Ronaldo, you have a very specific context, and role for film, that is different from others here. Debora, you could argue, rightly, about how interconnected these reasons are, but other...
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Mark Reid made a comment
I should also contextualise Cary's quote a little, as Deborah C. suggests: it was verbatim, in a seminar some years ago, but it stuck for a number of people encouraging us to make bold claims about film - from the position (in the UK, at least) of film being a 'poor relation' to the other arts: it is funded differently, through different government channels,...
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Mark Reid made a comment
As i was interviewing these two young women, I should say a few things about what they were doing, and how they were interviewed, to give a little context.
Katrin, you asked what they watched: well, Waves (Trey Edward Shults), which they loved, and hadn't heard of. Un chat de Paris, ditto, and a documentary about a group of older people recalling their... -
Mark Reid replied to Tereza Czesany Dvorakova
Hi Tereza! For those terms: 'film' and 'movie' are often interchangeable - though 'movie' is maybe more a popular term, and 'film' more serious. 'Cinema', in English, might refer to the buildings, but in French, it refers to the medium - a more formal version of 'film', I think. 'Moving Image' is used to avoid suggesting all stories on screen might be 'film'...
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Great usggestion!
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Hi Deborah - especial welcome to you, as we feature a short film about the DFF later in the course!
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Mark Reid replied to Ante Jurić
Hi Ante, WB/ Bugs Bunny were very good in their own way of educating through film; What's Opera Doc too!
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Mark Reid replied to Dev Vaswani
Hi Dev, lovely film, National Film Board of Canada made some beautiful, instructive films.
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Mark Reid replied to Noa Nikolić
Hi Noa, I hope you find what you're looking for here - there's a lot of material and examples about understanding how film making can be a part of film education. Welcome!
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi Justyna! hello everyone! Justyna, congratulations on being the the first person to arrive and comment - there should be a prize! My name is Mark, I work at the BFI in London, and along with my colleagues from different countries who have put this course together, we're delighted to have reached this point - it' been a long journey, but we hope worth it...
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Plausible!
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Mark Reid made a comment
As Shuna says, the thing to realise is how long the period was, and how much change it saw across 60 years - Dickens only wrote for 20 or 25 of those years, and not beyond, what, 1865? In our parallel time, think just of how much has changed btween 1990 and 2020.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone! My name is Mark, and i work with Gemma in the Education dept at BFI. We're very pleased to be able to welcome so many enthusiastic people from all over the world to enjoy and learn about the very earliest British films. And great to be reminded that the Lumiere brothers got there first (just!).
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Mark Reid made a comment
Hi everyone, last minute message from us: we have a different kind of online experience starting tomorrow night at 19.00 GMT - an interactive lecture on the Victorians. More here: https://www.facebook.com/119827158059452/posts/3316839135024889?sfns=mo
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Mark Reid replied to Alicja Kowalczyk
Alicja, which video are you thinking of? Is it Setting Son? I think there’s a fair amount of phantom ride (sped up) in there.
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Mark Reid made a comment
Just skimming through the latest comments, and see questions about other phantom rides in the BFI National Archive. The short answer is that of the 1million or so titles in there, 85% are TV programmes, 1% are feature films (I think), and the rest are shorts, early actuality films, newsreels, promo films, home movies - and yes, some of these will be phantom...
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I think that’s right about Victoria - my point was about Victorians in general
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That’s right Philip - it’s silver nitrate film that combusts from the friction when it’s projected too quickly (I think). And nitrate creates oxygen when it burns, which is .. not good! Cinemas used to burn down - the basis of the story in a Cinema Paradiso. Film moved to plastic-based acetate Film stock in the late 1940s.
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Absolutely Amy! Those ‘slowTV’ programmes reinvented the phantom ride, but at the opposite end of the durational spectrum!
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Mark Reid made a comment
As someone says in the thread here, there’s probably something evolutionary about our attraction to the sea, the comfort we derive from closeness to it..
