Image bank

Since 2009, the Seine-Saint-Denis County Council has been backing “la Culture et l’Art au Collège (CAC)”. This project is based to a large extent on the presence in class for several weeks (40h) of an artist or scientist whose mission is to engage the students in a process of research and creation. 

Tutors: THOMAS COULOMBEIX/ FILM EDITOR, MAYA FASTINGER and Elise Picon/ vidEO MAKERs & EDITORs, Alice Rabourdin and Morgane REBIÈRE/ EDUCATIONAL SPECIALISTs, FILM EDITORs 

Project manager: Mathieu Marion

Objectives:
Why create new pictures when there are so many already? Today, a great many creative projects are accomplished by making use of this limitation. Images, especially digital versions of them, and their massive circulation on networks, have given rise to new practices and new creations. These days, anyone can access an almost unlimited reservoir of pictures that they can not only view but also re-use, re-edit, subvert, and fragment. This means that there are brand new issues at stake for the art of editing and narration. 

Workshops:
Multitudes
The students become observers of current trends – on YouTube, Dailymotion and other exchange platforms, they learn about “mash up”, a burgeoning video art with its own genres and subgenres, gimmicks and variants. The students also make a detour via experimental cinema, the precursor of this genre, with its “films collés” or “spliced” movies.

The Art of Montage
This phase is carried out using digital tablets. The students learn some of the tool’s potential uses – extracting animated or still images from the internet, sticking images together, cutting video sequences, customising soundtracks, devising effects, etc. The students incorporate narrative and aesthetic challenges into this approach, making videos lasting several seconds based on a theme and a technique.

Another Story
The class is given a hard disk with two hours of images – extracts from films from different eras and in different styles, extracts from documentaries, television programmes and adverts, archive images, amateur films, etc. The students are also given a booklet with references for all the extracts on the hard disk. Using this basic material and equipped with their tablets, they have to create a 5-minute video story. Writing workshops involving brainstorming, devising plots and selecting image are followed by the creation of a storyboard (organising a simple multimedia narrative structure), culminating in the final production of their movie (editing and post-production). 

Outcome:
Collective
On 31st May 2017, a half-day of screenings and discussions was organised at the Trianon cinema in Romainville. After the screenings, each group of students explained the nature of the work carried out. The classes were then shown to a selection of professionally-made “mash-up” style films.
Individual
Using the scenographic device MICACO, a screening medium supplied by F93, the students organised a day to screen their films in their schools. This was followed by a discussion with students from the other classes invited to the screening. 

Outings (selection):
- CINÉMATHÈQUE FRANÇAISE
- FORUM DES IMAGES
- LA CITÉ DU CINÉMA 
- CENTRE GEORGES-POMPIDOU
- LA GAITÉ LYRIQUE

Participating schools:
- class 5e, COLLÈGE JORISSEN, DRANCY
- class 5e, COLLÈGE MARTIN DU GARD, EPINAY-SUR-SEINE
- class 5e, COLLÈGE THÉODORE MONOD, GAGNY
- class 3e, COLLÈGE BALZAC, NEUILLY-SUR-MARNE
- class 5e, COLLÈGE VICTOR HUGO, NOISY-LE-GRAND

Photo: PIERRE ANTOINE