Reading and working with texts
Reading (or creating and reading) and translating literary texts into audiovisual material is a process suitable for various age groups, subjects and curricular. It can be implemented in two different ways described below.
a) The participants of a process (students) are divided into groups of 2-4. The leader of the process gives them a poem to read. (Students may also choose a poem themselves. However, the length of a poem should be limited by the workshop’s duration). Each group is given one question related to the poem’s time and space, atmosphere and lyrical subject (lyrical I), e.g.: What is the space of the poem? When is the action of the poem taking place (season, time of the day, historical period, etc.)? How would you describe its atmosphere? How would you describe its lyrical subject? Etc.
Students work in groups to prepare their answer to one of the questions. After 5-7 minutes, each group presents their answer to the other participants. All the other groups are allowed to contribute with their answers and take part in the discussion. Having discussed all the questions and ideas, each group selects some keywords or phrases from the poem (one keyword per 6-10 words). Once the participants have made a list of keywords, they can think of ways to visualize them. For example, if one of the keywords is “spring”, then one might think of blossoming flowers, birds, or even a colorful wall of graffiti. The participants should not limit themselves in terms of illustrative images. Therefore, the workshop’s leader should encourage them to look for visual metaphors, abstract images, interesting camera movements, duration of shots (rhythm), or other aspects which could illustrate the keywords/phrases. After discussing their ideas for visualization, the participants are ready to film.
b) The participants of a process (students) are divided into groups of 2-4. The leader of the process shows the same abstract image to all the groups, and asks them to write a list of ten words inspired by the image. When all the groups are ready, they exchange their lists. Each group then has to create a poem by using 5-10 words from the received list. Finally, all the groups can think of ways to visualize their poems.