The following lesson plan was developed by Dr. Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth for an undergraduate Film and Literature course. The goal of this class session was to a) teach students how to use AVAnnotate software, and b) introduce and complete an annotation assignment titled “Annotating Film Form in Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon” using AVAnnotate. You can view Zoe’s lecture slides here.

As the field of digital humanities is new for most undergraduate students, this lesson built upon Zoe’s previous class meetings, wherein she contextualized the field of DH and facilitated a broader discussion of the film to be annotated (Maya Deren’s 1943 Meshes of the Afternoon). This workshop was focused on orienting students to how they can use AVAnnotate to interact with Meshes of the Afternoon, and culminated with each student creating an individual AVAnnotate project hosted on their own GitHub account.

You’ll notice that the slides presented to the students walk them through the who, what, why, and how of AVAnnotate before allowing students ample class time to create their own annotations of the film. Since students were provided the direct link to the film on The Internet Archive and had recently discussed important elements of film form that factor into Meshes of the Afternoon, students were able to jump into creating annotations from the provided spreadsheet (also linked in the assignment) fairly quickly. The primary questions that students had pertained to the use of the layer function, especially what(s) element of film form would be best to include as a layer. For instance, would a broader category like cinematography work better or worse than a narrower focus like canted angles? Zoe recommended students focus as narrowly as possible for this formative assignment, allowing them to slow down and really think about the element of film form that they chose made meaning. To model this process, Zoe presented a sample project tailored to the class created by AVAnnotate undergraduate intern, Luke Sumpter, based on the assignment criteria.

After the lesson, Zoe facilitated a conversation about students’ experiences of annotating Meshes of the Afternoon guided by the following discussion questions:

1. What element of film form did you decide to focus on?
2. Why did that formal element seem especially important?
3. Did you notice anything that you hadn’t seen before in the film based on this close viewing?
4. Did any new interpretations of the film emerge from these annotations?
5. What is the relationship between observing film form and film analysis?

Students had varying success (approximately 70%) creating a project in the time given (a one hour and fifteen minute class period). If a student was unable to create a project, likely because of the unfamiliarity with the high-level of standardization necessary for computer readability, Zoe allowed students to submit their annotation spreadsheets, so that she could still engage with their annotations of the film and provide feedback on their annotation process. To grade this assignment, Zoe used a simple complete/incomplete criteria and offered feedback to students about film vocabulary or their analysis of the film in Canvas. Doing so provided a streamlined way of identifying where students needed support, especially in their use of film terms which are new to most students in a literature course.