Taking video apart

Exploiting the multimodal nature of video to spark curiosity

Starting with a transcript

Video is a multimodal medium. To explain what that means, let’s start with a video transcript. As you read it, consider:

• Who is the speaker?
• Who is the speaker addressing?
• Where does the exchange take place?
• What other information is missing?
  
  

Video transcript

There’s something I need to tell you.
This relationship isn’t working.
It isn’t good for me.
I’m breaking up with you.
It’s not me, it’s you.

I became dependent on you.
And you were always there for me.
Even when I was at my worst.
But I didn’t realise the damage you were doing.

You created a toxic environment.
Not just for me but for others too.
You’re suffocating me.
We’re just no longer compatible.
Also, there’s one more thing.
I met someone else.

Although we can’t see the speaker, we can already start to build a story. The most obvious idea is that this is a breakup with a partner. But there are other possibilities – perhaps it’s a teenager ending a relationship with social media, for example.

This is an effective way to use video in your teaching: start with a transcript, create an information gap, spark curiosity, ask students to think about the bigger picture, and invite them to share their ideas.

Three modes of video

The missing information is provided by the following modes:

🔈 The audio mode: If you were to listen to the video with your eyes closed, you would hear that the voice belongs to a woman. Her words are accompanied by a pop track that begins with sparse piano and gradually builds in energy, quickening the pace. Sound effects and, towards the end, other people’s voices in different languages all contribute to the complexity of the narrative.

👁️ The visual mode: Now, if you were to watch the video with the sound down, you would see a woman sitting at a table in a cafe. But rather than speaking with a human being, she is addressing some items: a carrier bag, an empty bottle, and a plastic spoon. The scene cuts to other shots of the woman shopping for groceries, drinking water from a plastic bottle, and some grim footage of a polluted beach.

🖊️ The text mode: At the end of the video, onscreen texts call the viewer to action:
Are you ready for a break-up?
Turn the tide on plastic
Take the pledge at cleanseas.org

Multimodality

The audio, visual and text provide different information. But they work together to tell the story of a woman trying end a toxic relationship with plastic and invite us to do the same.

The video is a PSA (public service announcement) created for the United Nations Environment Programme.

By taking the medium apart in this way, we can appreciate the complexity of how video works: each mode contributes its own layer of meaning, a phenomenon we call multimodality.

As teachers, we can exploit this. We can isolate the different modes and present them one at a time. This slow-release approach creates information gaps that keep students curious and invite them to share their own creative ideas.

My new course for teachers

If you'd like to learn more about these ideas and apply them to the videos you use for teaching, Taking Video Apart is the perfect course for you.

It’s a slow release course, designed to support your teaching, not add to your workload. It would be great to work with you.

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