Have you ever given a student a blank page and watched them freeze? As a Media and English teacher, I’ve seen this overwhelm many times. The infinite possibilities of creativity can sometimes feel like a daunting wall instead of an open door. That’s why, when my S2 (12/13 year old) high school Media class embarked upon a new video project, I challenged them to think inside the box.
As a Media and English teacher, I'm passionate about helping students tell their stories and express themselves through multimodal tools. I'm always looking for ways to help them develop their creativity and problem-solving skills, and I've found that one of the most effective ways to supercharge this is by, somewhat surprisingly, using restrictions.
Full transparency, this idea isn't new, I fully recognise this. I first came across this concept while reading Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, a novel which becomes progressively lipogrammatic (more and more letters of the alphabet being omitted or 'banned' from use) as the book goes on. Lipograms and other forms of restrictions were favoured by group of 1960s French writers called the Oulipo who were very much about using constraint to help them think laterally and explore new ways to express themselves and Four shots: a body being covered by a cloth, a baseball bat, a mask on a desk with folded hands and the shoes of two people. their stories. The basic idea is that there's a certain creative magic in constriction. Limitations and constraints can actually boost our creativity rather than hinder it. Instead of facing an overwhelming blank page, a defined set of rules, tools, or conditions can force us to think more inventively to meet a creative brief.
After doing several video projects, we decided to introduce constraints by making a silent film. My goal was to see how removing elements students typically rely on or default to would push them to find other ways to exercise their creativity and tell their stories.
The Constraints
In (very) simplified terms, films use three main elements to create meaning.
- Image elements: Visuals like shot size, camera angles, costumes, props, and actor performance.
- Audio elements: Dialogue, music, and sound effects.
- Text elements: Title cards or exposition text.
By choosing to make a silent film, we forced a rebalancing of these elements outside of what learners were used to. Without dialogue, the visuals became much more important. Students had to focus on showing the story, not telling it. As fellow Language Arts teachers will know, is a core principle of good storytelling, whether it's written or visual.
We created a "box" for the students to work inside by outlining the following specific restrictions for their project:
- No dialogue: This was the biggest constraint and a total diversion from video projects they were used to creating.
- Maximum of five intertitle cards: To prevent them from just writing out all the dialogue as text.
- No color: They had to work in black and white in the edit, removing a key visual element (extra challenging to this class as they had already undertaken significant learning about the semantic associations of colour).
- Limited music choice: They could only choose from three classic 1920s-style piano pieces I provided for them (upbeat, dark/moody, or melancholy to suit the broad theme of their story).
The Results
I've never seen a class dive into action so quickly. The constraints gave them a real energy and purpose. They had problems to solve from the very beginning, which forced them to think laterally and creatively. The results were phenomenal. The students produced some of the most stunning shots I’ve seen from 12-year-olds in my decade of teaching film.
Even better, the impact went beyond this single project. In our next video project, they continued to apply the same care and consideration to their visual storytelling, even with dialogue back in the mix. The skill they developed, this practical understanding of "show, don't tell", also translated to their creative writing in English (which I was also teaching them at the time). By embracing constraint, they developed a deeper understanding of storytelling skills that transcended the project itself.
Give it a Go!
If this has piqued your interest, I encourage you to check out the Everyone Can Create Video projects. The "Create Editing Effects" project is a great place to start, as it's a shorter activity that can be adapted to many different subject areas. Our silent film project was firmly rooted in editing effects.
And, next time you're starting a creative project with your students, consider the magic of constraint. Don't just think outside the box - build the box yourself and see what brilliance might just emerge from inside it!
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