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Game-Based Pedagogy: Playful Approaches for the Media Production & Digital Humanities College Classroom

The Film Directing Game

THE FILM DIRECTING GAME is a social physical game played in the physical world. It’s part of a series of experiments that look into the unique potentials and limitations of play and experiential games in college-level media education.

This game asks the question: Can play be activated as a pedagogical framework to generate collaborative creativity in the college classroom? The goal is for teams to create a filmed scene with creative merit, and the game presents a structure to accomplish this even if the players have never done so before.

The social play of THE FILM DIRECTING GAME communicates that success is only possible when everyone is safe, included, and respected. Bonding is required. Team members will need to lift each other up. Not one person has all the skills and competencies necessary to accomplish creative, ethical filmmaking – but working together, it can all come into place.

HOW TO PLAY
First we establish teams and roles. Each team consists of six players, and the roles are: Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Actor 1, Actor 2, and Crew. The first six students to arrive to class are designated as Producers. The remaining students simply count from one to six to determine their team membership.

At this point, each Producer has a few minutes to huddle their team and facilitate teammates getting to know each other. Team members should make a case regarding their preference to be a Director. When time is up, the Producer selects the team’s Director. It’s noted to the players that, as a Producer, your primary concern is to select someone who is or wants to work on being a leader. The Director will be leading the cast and the crew in efficiently producing a work of creative merit that would be impossible to create as a single individual. Now the Director and Producer have a brief couple of minutes to hear out the other team members voice their role preferences and perhaps discuss their relevant abilities or experiences. Then, both Director and Producer together assign the remaining roles of Cinematographer, Actor 1, Actor 2, and Crew.

SCENE CARDS: Each Scene Card contains a two-page scene of one script. (In this playtest the Scene Cards are from the script of the play ART by Yasmina Reza.) At this point, the teams line up to begin pre-production – excluding the actors who have taken the SCENE CARDS and moved on to the Production Set to begin to practice their lines.
PROP CARDS: Each Producer draws two PROP CARDS.
FRAME CARDS: Each Cinematographer draws one FRAME CARD.

Now that there are teams and roles, preproduction begins. The Preproduction River represents the somewhat tumultuous, yet inextricably collaborative, process of preproduction. The objective is for the team members (excluding the two Actors who are busy working on their lines) to work together to cross the preproduction river by stepping only on Planning Milestones, represented here by paper plates. There are several simple rules to follow, though mainly what matters most is that if a player touches the floor or any object except the plate or another teammate, this player must go back to the start. The first team to cross the river proceeds to the Production Set. When a team arrives on set, the members assess their PROP and FRAME CARDS, and working togethery they do as follows:

The Producer takes on the responsibility of acquiring all necessary props
The Cinematographer takes on the responsibility of figuring out how the scene will be shot such that – when it ends – it does so with the same visual composition that is on the FRAME CARD. In other words, the FRAME CARD illustrates the visual end point of the scene.
The Crew assists in every way necessary

The objective is to shoot the scene described on the SCENE CARD incorporating the props on the PROP CARDS, and figure out a visual trajectory for the scene such that it concludes with the composition on the FRAME CARD. In other words: Shoot the given scene incorporating the two props and end with the designated framing. The time limit in this playtest was six minutes; that is, the team had six minutes to organize themselves before the Director called “Action!" (The scene can, from that point on, continue for as long as it takes.)

The responsibility of the Producer and Crew is to keep track of the time, the set, the furniture, props, slate, to recruit extras if necessary, to record sound, and to assist the Cinematographer.
The responsibility of the Director is to understand the dramatic meaning of the scene and to assist the actors in figuring out their intentions, their motivations, and their blocking.
The responsibility of the two Actors is to know their lines and to work with the Director on their characters’ intentions, motivations, and blocking.
The responsibility of the Cinematographer is to compose a visually dynamic scene, making sure to end on the designated framing, and to assist the Director and the Actors.

LEARNING GOALS

To cover some basics: This is the first day of class, just as there is also a first day of production on the set. The game seeks to communicate, experientially, that it’s necessary for everyone to quickly realize that this is a collaborative space. Bonding will be required. Team members will need to lift each other up. Not one person has all the skills, competencies, and behaviors necessary to accomplish this, but working together it can all come into place.
To encourage assertiveness: The game constructs a magic circle or conceptual space where players respect each other and are encourage to talk about their director’s vision.
The goal of the game is to create a collaborative creative short filmed scene, and the game presents a structure in order to accomplish this even if the players have never done so before.
To gesture towards problematic realities about the film industry and encourage speculative and transformative change. For example, filmmaking is often a physically demanding endeavor and fledgling filmmakers need to think about ways in which film sets become more inclusive for persons with disabilities. Production sets can be high-pressure environments where everyone needs to be safe, included, and respected. Filmmakers need to learn to negotiate creativity and efficiency with ethical behavior.

Table of Contents (also available on this window's upper left corner):
1. Introduction
2. The Film Directing Game
3. Future Tripping Machine
4. Directing with Action Verbs!
5. ideaDECK

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The Film Directing Game (video) The “151 DIRECTORS" game is a social physical game. It’s part of a series of experiments that look into the unique affordances -- as well as challenges and limitations -- of play and experiential games in college-level media education. The game is created by Take Action Games and playtested on April 3, 2017 by students in the 151 Film Directing course taught by Huy Truong in the Film and Digital Media Departments at UC Santa Cruz.