Experiential Learning is what WILL Interactive is all about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiential_education
In this first blog entry for WILL Interactive’s shiny new site, I just wanted to touch on something that is at the core of the WILL philosophy, learning by doing. Fancy academic types will call this Experiential Learning, or learning by experiencing a topic, situation, or event. As a springboard into this idea, I wanted to relate something that happened to me this week at WILL.
We have a lot of actors who come through our doors, seeking to be in our movies. Recently we had a large audition for a half dozen films we have coming up, mostly on military themes and for use by military personnel. I want to use this as an example because it will hopefully highlight the types of, needs for, and possibilities of, experiential learning. That was an ugly sentence, eh?
I sat in on the auditions as a reader and redirector and was surprised quite a few times by the type of learning going on just in the audition process. And not just by our auditionees. Let me explain.
Some of our auditionees were models, sent by the same agency that provides us with a range of talent. They certainly looked good on camera. But often, they had trouble looking at me (their temporary scene partner) and not directly at the camera. They fumbled over lines and seemed to have never spoken the English language before. But when the cameras were off, they were at ease talking and spoke quite clearly. Some of them might have never been in a movie audition before if the puzzled slates were any indication. We hopefully gave them a good audition as we did many takes and redirects to see their range, ease their nerves, and make sure nobodies time was wasted. Sometimes it’s a diamond in the rough. Which is funny when you think they all at least looked like diamonds to start with.
Another type of auditionee was the ex-military guy or girl. Maybe I should call them sir or madam, as that is what they called us. They were very formal, and displayed an ease with military acronyms, rankings, problems, and communication. These tended to be people with little acting background who came through the same agencies because they were retired and wanted something to do. If anybody could play the part of an army guy struggling with home issues, the guy with actual real life experience in such matters would be that person, right?
The last general type of auditionee was, of course, the actor. Some of them stage actors, some of them movie actors, but all of them had polished headshots, ease with speaking language from the script the first time through, and an ability to be redirected into a ‘dramatic scene’ or ‘romantic scene’, or ‘buddy scene’ with confidence. Some were more adept than others, but if anybody really shined in just auditioning, it was this last group. Even if to a trained military person, their lack of military training would be obvious, or their look far too….let’s say bohemian.
I think all of these people learned something just by doing the audition. A model having never read from a scene with little preparation across from a man(me) playing their wife, they’ll certainly know a little better what to expect the next time they have to do that. Maybe it’ll be just at WILL auditions, but taking a step back, they’ve started learning something they couldn’t get from a book. What it actually feels like to be in an audition. To be directed. Where to look or not to look. How hard and complicated this acting thing can be. The military people learned something similar I think. Doing something in real life and acting something on camera are quite different. It’s the same if they wanted to write a military movie, they had lots of knowledge and anecdotes about military life, but what did they know about writing? And the actors hopefully learned a bit about military jargon, ranks, insubordinate eyeballing of a superior(it happened, haha), and a glimpse into a military world they’ve never seen by experiencing it, well, second or third hand. And of course reading about the types of challenges these soldiers were training for.
And I did mention that not just our auditionees learned something, right? Reading across from them or standing back while they did scenes or narration, I learned all sorts of things. The military guys had a way of questioning an order that nobody else had. When they said “We cannot wait on bomb disposal” to their superiors, they had a way of saying “cannot” that nobody else did. Not a trace of insubordination or whining or helplessness. After reading the same sides a hundred times, I was surprised when lines I flagged as problematic/needs rewriting in my head were spoken easily by somebody with a southern accent, or by a woman, or anybody but me, haha. This isn’t useless information, or simply random observation, it’s education that all of us at WILL can use when we write our scripts, direct our movies, and so on.
In the real world, such little bits of training or education happen all the time. We don’t need a book on how to avoid being hit by a car when crossing the road. When we are little we have our hands held, and watch our parents or siblings look both ways. We learn which route home from work is fastest by driving it everyday and experimenting by asking coworkers or having time to waste.
But not all training is as casual or as risk free as spending a few more minutes in traffic or having our arm yanked back by a worried parent. When the issue is drug abuse, or hate crime, or bomb disposal, learning by doing can be a very dangerous way to find the right path.
If you clicked on that above link for experiential learning on Wikipedia, you learned that it combines -doing- with -discussion-. It flips teacher and student roles putting both in new territory to help educate everybody better. And it’s a lot less boring than reading a book and taking a test, as reading and writing usually aren’t the two most memorable things you can do. And decidedly -more- boring than putting yourself in serious danger when you don’t have much experience doing so and getting out in one piece.
So hopefully this blog will give you insight into WILL Interactive, what we do, and how we do it. It will give you some behind the scenes looks at WILL writers, programmers, actors, editors, graphic designers, producers, the whole works. We’re going to give you lots of choices, products, and information and ways to give us feedback on what you want to see and what you’ve seen so far. We want you to make this blog your home as much as it will be ours because we are genuinely interested in learning from other people and looking at the paths they would choose or have chosen.