You Tested!

While we were still on campus, I tested a lighting tutorial for GENED 1049: East Asian Cinema. Marlon tasked me and 3 other LLUFS with the following assignment: recreate the lighting in this screenshot.

And so we got started! I, like most of the students in the GenEd, had no experience with lighting. Everything from how to attach the lights to how to turn them on to how to aim them was something novel to learn. The workshop was incredibly physical, with us moving around constantly.

One person was the model at all times, and we did our best to switch so that everyone could also have the opportunity to do the tutorial. We had to work as a team to both arrange the lights and to dissect the image, discussing as people brand-new to lighting where we thought the light sources for the different shadows should be.

But how did this help the Learning Lab?

Doing this tutorial gave me more than just a (very) basic understanding of how lighting works. It also prepared the Learning Lab to offer a tutorial to the GenEd students. By having equally inexperienced undergraduates give it a try, Marlon was able to alter the workshop to better fit the time/number of students in the class. They also were able to test out alternatives with different levels of studio light. Having the four of us mess around with the lights let us learn and served as a model for the way that other students like us might learn. It was also fun -- it felt creative and collaborative, low-stakes but motivating. We were able to joke with each other -- serving as yet another model of a way in which learning does not have to be stressful or boring. Instead, modeling this workshop was just another example of the ways in which the Learning Lab makes learning fun and engaging :)

The Final Product