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10.1177/1527476403255813ARTICLETelevision & New Media / November 2003Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture
VideoCulture
Crossing Borders with Young People’s
Video Productions
Horst Niesyto
University of Ludwigsburg, Germany
David Buckingham
London University
JoEllen Fisherkeller
New York University
This article presents findings from an international research project on the use of video for
interculutral youth communication, “VideoCulture.” Young people from different locales of
five Western countries produced and exchanged short videotapes on a range of themes, and
their responses to each other’s productions were recorded and analyzed. A review of the
rationale and methodology for the project frames the presentation of two case studies. One
study focuses specifically on how young people as media producers learn the “languages”
of video production and how they conceptualize their audience. Another study examines
issues of reception, in which ideas about a shared sense of “youth experience” and young
people’s conceptions of their counterparts in other cultures are both playing key roles. A con
-
cluding discussion reviews the multiple and interrelated findings of the entire study and the
implications they hold for cross-cultural communication, youth media production, audience
interpretation, and media education.
Keywords: media production; media education; youth research; intercultural communication
Introduction: Youth Research Using Video Production
The importance of the media in young people’s life experiences is well
established through research on media consumption (see Buckingham
2000; Fisherkeller 2002). By contrast, there is very little documentation and
research on young people as media producers and on youths’ interpreta
-
tions of other youths’ media products. Auditory and audiovisual media
461
TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA
Vol. 4 No. 4, November 2003 461–482
DOI: 10.1177/1527476403255813
© 2003 Sage Publications
increasingly offer young people opportunities to communicate their ideas
and feelings using nonverbal and nonprint forms. The expressive, emo
-
tional, and ambiguous nature of a great deal of media material expands the
norms and repertoires of representation expected by society, which are
largely oriented around rationality and effectiveness. In making audiovi
-
sual media, do young people detach themselves from the constraints of
their immediate social norms and cultural repertoires? In exchanging their
media productions, are youths able to establish new forms of contact with
youth cultures situated all over the globe?
Several analyses of films about young people exist, but very little atten
-
tion has been paid to films made by young people themselves. However,
research of this kind is now beginning to emerge in the fields of visual soci
-
ology and anthropology. In Germany, research projects are being devel
-
oped in the field of media education that give young people opportunities
to express personal and group-oriented experiences in self-produced video
films. Such films typically represent the body and other physical forms as
well as more abstract forms of symbolization. Besides analyzing the films
themselves, researchers are gathering data about the contextual aspects of
the production process (see Niesyto 2001). The potential for international
exchange within this field is great.
Young people grow up with ever more kinds of media. They are to some
extent more autonomous than adults in their uses of media. Some critics
argue that we may be witnessing the emergence of a “media gap” between
the generations partly because the media that are now most popular with
young people are inaccessible, thematically and aesthetically, to the major-
ity of adults. But this gap may also reflect a broader disconnect between
“presentational” forms of symbolization (such as body language, images,
and music) preferred by many younger generations and the “logo-centric”
verbal and written modes relied on by most older generations.
The implications of this situation need to be more fully recognized by
researchers. Broadly speaking, research on youth cultures aims to under
-
stand how young people assimilate symbolic resources made accessible to
them in everyday life and to examine the modes of expression they appro
-
priate in doing so. In the process, research needs to develop new method
-
ological approaches that go beyond verbal and written methods of collect
-
ing and recording data and incorporate audiovisual methods as well.
Within qualitative youth and communication research, verbally based
methods such as narrative interviews, group discussions, or written field
notes are still predominant. Yet these methods provide limited access to the
emotional and symbolic aspects of young people’s experiences and media-
related modes of expression. Verbally based methods frequently give rise
to a tension between the language of the young people and that of the
researcher. By contrast, the social-aesthetic paradigm that we use in this
462 Television & New Media / November 2003
project acknowledges the significance of audiovisual communication in
people’s experiences of reality and offers a new perspective for youth
research. To learn about young people’s views and perspectives, we should
give them opportunities to express themselves through their own media
productions, as well as share their creations with other youths.
Video and Global Communication
VideoCulture is a broad-based ethnographic research project that
explores the potential of audiovisual media production as a means of com
-
munication between young people in different regions. The project began
in 1997-98 with research groups in Germany and England and subse
-
quently integrated colleagues in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the
United States.
1
Many media and cultural studies scholars have argued that communica
-
tion and media cultures transcend national borders. Among the effects of
globalization is increased access to media-making technologies by people
in diverse cultures and geographical regions. As a result, transnational cul-
tures may be emerging with their own distinctive practices, bodies of
knowledge, conventions, and lifestyles (Featherstone 1995). New relation-
ships between the local and the global may be growing, providing their
own combinations of social- and media-generated patterns (Niesyto 2001).
Yet there is a gap between enormous technological expansion on one
hand and our knowledge of people’s actual experiences of transnational or
cross-cultural media exchanges on the other. The exchange and under-
standing of cultural self-representations via audiovisual media forms
require new strategies for teaching, learning, and research. To create and
interpret “other” audiovisual expressions, perhaps we need to learn and
understand some shared sets of audiovisual aesthetics and feelings—some
transcultural audiovisual languages that go beyond verbal language—and
use forms of visual, musical, and bodily expression. Developing common
means and interpretations of expression requires specific educational
interventions as well as research designs.
VideoCulture set out to explore these issues through a series of intercon
-
nected case studies situated in very different national contexts. The project
was originally conceived and developed at Ludwigsburg University in
Germany and began implementation at the end of 1997. The concept was to
enable groups of young people between the ages of fourteen and nineteen
to produce, exchange, and interpret thematically oriented video pro-
ductions. The youths were selected from a variety of socioeconomic back-
grounds, and the project was carried out in both schools and informal
settings such as youth clubs and community arts centers. The finished
products were then reviewed by the project facilitators. Certain selections
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 463
were assembled into sampler tapes, which were then distributed to a vari
-
ety of sites for inquiry into the reception of these video films by culturally
diverse youth audiences.
Following a pilot program in Germany during which eight pilot films
were produced, the international project group was established in Febru
-
ary 1998. Sixteen video films emerged from the first international field
phase, and the international project group chose six of them for a sampler:
Ganxtamovie (Budapest), The Contradiction (Prague), Freedom (Reinheim,
Germany), Fresh Memories (Ludwigshafen, Germany), Overdose (Buda
-
pest), and Equilibrium (London). Between the end of 1998 and spring 1999,
eleven other films were produced, out of which six were selected for a sec
-
ond sampler: Love (Ludwigsburg, Germany), Angel and Devil (Prague), Our
Life (Freiburg, Germany), Push to Pull (London), Self-Destruct (Los
Angeles), and Joy and Grief (Karlsbad, Germany). Both samplers repre
-
sented a mixture of topics, film styles, and social backgrounds.
The project sought to address three main questions:
1. To what extent can we identify a transcultural, audiovisual, symbolic lan-
guage in videotapes produced by groups of young people from different lan-
guage areas and symbolic milieus?
2. Which styles of symbolic representation and interpretation are involved in
the production process, in the productions themselves, and in the interpreta-
tions of these artifacts? To what extent are the symbolic styles and interpreta-
tions influenced by education, gender, ethnicity/race, and class background,
as well as by the characteristics of the young people’s own (available) media
cultures?
3. How can transnational or cross-cultural communication via audiovisual
(nonverbal, nonprint) forms best be taught?
Method
The project design imposed certain conditions and constraints on the
young people’s productions, in part to ensure a degree of comparability.
The youth participants needed to have no prior experience of video pro
-
duction, and the production event had to last no more than the equivalent
of five days. After being given a basic introduction to the medium and to
the main elements of filming and postproduction (S-VHS cameras and dig
-
ital editing), the youths were invited to produce a short video film (no more
than three minutes in duration) containing no verbal language. They were
given a few relatively open themes—such as “being young” and “oppo
-
sites attract”—although they were also permitted to select a theme or title
of their own. Beyond this, the tutors or facilitators were asked to let the
work be guided by the young people’s own needs for self-expression and to
provide support and help as required.
464 Television & New Media / November 2003
Several methods were used to record and analyze what took place. Par
-
ticipant observation of the workshops themselves focused on the produc
-
tion processes, communication among the young people, and conversa
-
tions between them and the tutors or facilitators. In some contexts, an open
questionnaire was used to gather individual impressions and interpreta
-
tions of the finished “partner films.” In other contexts, this was achieved
through group discussions that were subsequently transcribed. In an addi
-
tional project, Professor Renate Müller questioned 134 eighth-grade stu
-
dents from different types of schools in the Stuttgart, Germany, area using a
multimedia questionnaire. The students saw selected video films from the
project, and a computer recorded their responses using semantic differen
-
tials as well as continuous response (Müller 2003). Finally, the video films
themselves were analyzed using a range of criteria developed from the
young people’s own interpretations and focused largely on aspects of
image, sound, and montage.
As a start in analyzing our international project and its goals and objec-
tives, we present two case studies. The first, based in London, discusses
issues of production, and the second, based in New York, discusses issues
of reception.
Researching Production
In the London project, we wanted to build on previous work about
young people’s uses of media for creative production (e.g., Buckingham
and Sefton-Green 1994; Buckingham, Grahame, and Sefton-Green 1995).
The international dimension of the project enabled us to pay particular
attention to how young people develop their senses of audience. Would it
make a difference to these young video filmmakers that their work would
be seen by other young people and not just by youths in their immediate
communities but also in other countries?
As with creative writing, most of what students produce in media class
-
rooms is actually made for an audience of one—namely, the teacher. In
principle, enabling students to produce for a “real” (a.k.a. nonteacher)
audience can encourage them to think through the choices they make in
production and their possible consequences more broadly. Being con
-
fronted with audience responses can motivate the student producers to
reflect more critically on the relationships between intentions and results.
Yet there may be limits to the extent to which students will be able to take
account of any audience, however “real.” They may have other concerns
and motivations that run counter to rationalistic models of “ideal commu
-
nication.” In the context of the school classroom, real audiences inevitably
tend to be simulated, or at least very artificially constructed (Buckingham,
Grahame, and Sefton-Green 1995, chap. 6). And even in the case of the
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 465
VideoCulture project, questions remain about how real the audience might
be—particularly if it is an unknown audience from another country that
one never expects to meet face to face.
This issue also relates directly to the central question of the VideoCulture
project—that is, the question of media language. Is there (or could there
ever be) a form of transcultural symbolic language that overcomes cultural
and linguistic differences? This is not simply a psychological question that
can be addressed through recourse to theories of perception and cognition
(cf. Messaris 1995). It is also a question about the social and historical
institutionalization of particular linguistic conventions and genres (see
Buckingham 1993, chap. 2). At the risk of generalization, it could be argued
that the globalization of the media industries has resulted in the dominance
of two or three principal “media languages”: the “classical” Hollywood
style, with its reliance on continuity editing, realism, and invisible narra
-
tion; the montage-based style of MTV (and some advertising), which
draws on a history of avant-garde film aesthetics; and (perhaps) the style of
the “art movie,” with its more elliptical approach to narration and its self-
conscious use of visual symbolism. Rather than expecting young people to
spontaneously “discover” a new form of transcultural media language, we
should not be surprised if they use those that are already available to them.
However, we also need to situate these uses in terms of a sociology of taste
cultures (see Bourdieu 1984). Irrespective of the models students are
offered by teachers, different social groups may have different cultural
competencies that will dispose them toward different forms of media
language, as both media consumers and producers.
These are complex issues that are unlikely to be resolved through a
small-scale study of this kind. Nevertheless, our experiences in the
VideoCulture project do suggest some ways in which the debate can be
taken further. In the light of these arguments, we will now discuss two con
-
trasting video films, Opposites Attract and Equilibrium, made by young peo
-
ple in London as part of the international phase of the project.
Opposites Attract
Opposites Attract (a video film using the theme of the London program as
its title) is, in many respects, a typical first exercise in video. The video film
tells the story of a black boy and a white girl who meet at a video production
course. Initially reluctant to communicate with each other, they eventually
start to play around with the camera and finally leave arm in arm as friends.
In this video film, there are clear sequences of establishing shots and close-
ups, shot–reverse shot patterns, and point-of-view shots. The images are
accompanied by a fast drum-and-bass reggae-style soundtrack.
466 Television & New Media / November 2003
The video film was produced by three young people: Sinead (seventeen,
white), Richard (fourteen, black), and Siobhan (fifteen, black). All come
from working-class backgrounds. Following a day of basic instruction pro
-
vided by the tutor, this group spent some time casting around for ideas,
using the given theme of “opposites attract.” They expressed frustration
with the restriction on not using language or dialogue, as they felt this
would be needed to convey “a story”; initially, they never considered the
possibility of interpreting the assigned theme in a nonnarrative form.
Broadly speaking, however, they were pleased with the results (“we’ve
made a film!”); the course tutor felt that the group had developed an effec
-
tive grasp of the “film language” she had set out to teach.
Equilibrium
Equilibrium is a very different kind of video film, constructed in the
montage-based style of a music video. The video film focuses on two char-
acters, both white and in their teens: a girl dressed in a white sheet or a
feather boa and a boy dressed in a black cape with black mask-like shapes
painted around his eyes. Rapidly cut sequences of images feature the cou-
ple kissing, close-ups of the girl’s eye, the boy’s face appearing through a
black cloth, a rat licking a stud in the boy’s tongue, and the girl’s hand being
drawn across her face, smearing the eye makeup down her cheek. Several
images are reflected in mirrors (sometimes in negative), and the girl fre-
quently looks directly into the camera. In some shots, the boy and the girl
are seen lying down, arranged to form a yin-yang symbol. The video film is
accompanied by a techno soundtrack, which starts slowly and then speeds
up, and the pace of the editing reflects this change of rhythm.
Bea (Beatrice), the producer of this video film, was a middle-class,
sixteen-year-old, white female. Like the others, she had not had any previ
-
ous experience of video production, but she did have other experiences as a
performer that were not shared by the other young people. For instance,
she had attended extracurricular drama classes since the age of nine and
had recently acted in a commercial music video. Because Bea began the
course a day late, she missed the tutor’s introduction, and she was allowed
to work individually. She reported later that when she had heard the theme
“opposites attract,” she had immediately decided to construct a montage-
based music video about the dynamics of a close personal relationship. At
an early stage, she produced a storyboard of a series of symbolic images,
which remained close to her final edited version. Bea’s evaluation of the
course was very positive. She commented on enjoying the “freedom” to
create her own video film, and in a later interview, she said that her next
project would be a twenty-minute “art film,” which she planned to produce
in the coming summer vacation.
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 467
Different Languages?
In terms of “film language,” there are several striking differences
between these two video films. The group that made Opposites Attract set
out to produce a narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In this
respect, they achieved their goal. The characters have coherent motiva
-
tions, and one event leads logically to the next. Their production employs
the most obvious “rules” or conventions of continuity editing, and there is
never any doubt about where the viewer is positioned in time or space. By
contrast, Bea set out to produce a nonnarrative, montage-style video film in
Equilibrium. Several recurrent images are intertwined, although there is no
obvious logic about how they are juxtaposed or arranged. While there are
“characters” here, we are left to infer a good deal about what motivates
them. The pace of the editing relates to the pace of the musical soundtrack,
but there is no obvious use of continuity editing or any clear sequence of
cause and effect.
Both video films relate fairly explicitly to our given theme of opposites
attract. Yet whereas the opposites in the group production are primarily
individual personalities, the oppositions in Equilibrium are much more
abstract and self-consciously symbolic. Interestingly, the group video film
was interpreted by other young people who saw it as promoting a “moral”
or message—particularly in relation to racial harmony—although in fact
the group did not claim this as their overt intention. By contrast, Equilibrium
specifically aims for an aesthetic response, rather than a singular “mean-
ing.” It requires a more intensive form of interpretative “work” on the part
of the reader, and it consciously promotes a degree of uncertainty.
Without being unduly schematic, these differences might be understood
in terms of the dominant types of film language identified above. Essen
-
tially, the group film uses Hollywood film language, while Equilibrium uses
the montage-based style of MTV—albeit, perhaps, with elements of the
self-conscious visual symbolism of the art movie. These differences might
be traced to the social and cultural differences between their producers. Bea
clearly possesses a form of cultural capital that is unavailable to the
other young people here. This is partly a matter of her middle-class
background and partly to do with her “subcultural” experiences and
identifications. The fact that she had been involved in production as a per
-
former on two previous occasions was also significant, of course. In our
interviews with her, Bea presented herself as an artist making a personal
statement, although this was also made possible because she was able to
work alone. By contrast, the fact that the Opposites Attract group had to
negotiate their way to an agreed approach effectively militated against a
more “personal” style—even if this had been something they had wished
to achieve in the first place.
468 Television & New Media / November 2003
Imagining the Audience
Although the introduction to the project included a brief explanation of
the VideoCulture network, there was no explicit discussion among the
group about how other young people from different cultures might view
their films. It was only on subsequent reflection that the question of audi
-
ence really became a concern—and this emerged in particular when the
group had the opportunity to watch and discuss some of the films pro
-
duced by other young people involved in the project.
At least initially, Richard and Sinead of Opposites Attract were reluctant
to accept the suggestion—represented strongly in some of the German stu
-
dents’ feedback—that their video film was conveying a “message” about
overcoming differences, whether of race or gender. Richard maintained
that this social message had not been intentional on their part and that the
decision to use a black boy and a white girl was simply a consequence of
who was available. As such, audience responses helped them to become
aware of a gap between their intentions and the final results; thus, real audi-
ences can play a role in young people’s learning about their own media
productions.
By contrast, Bea had consciously seen the preparation and production
stages of Equilibrium as personal and therapeutic—an attempt to express
something she felt on an emotional level. As she put it, “I don’t really care
that much if the audience totally misunderstands it or misinterprets it for
themselves, ’cause I don’t care—’cause I did it for myself.” However, she
also said that she had changed to a more distanced stance at the editing
stage and made her selections on the basis of which shots might have a
visual impact on the audience: “By the time we were editing, I’d done all
my film therapy. I was over that (laughs) and I just wanted to put across
something that would stick in people’s minds.”
Both in her presentation of her own work and in her reflections on the
other young people’s tapes, Bea was able to access a quasi-academic dis
-
course of aesthetic appreciation that was not articulated by the other stu
-
dents. For example, she judged the other productions in terms of existing
cultural movements (“surreal”), she searched for “symbolism” and philo
-
sophical themes (“reality and perception”), she used a somewhat “techni
-
cal” terminology (“that violin harmony”), and she was able to assume a
rational distance both from the productions themselves and from her own
responses to them (cf. Bourdieu 1984). Likewise, in relation to her own
work, she was keen to present herself as an artist with “vision” and “imagi
-
nation,” claiming her video film to be a “personal” statement that was
“clear and focused” from the very beginning. In fact, there are some
grounds for questioning these claims, since at least some of what she
produced came down to accidents in the editing.
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 469
Nevertheless, for all the young people here, the experience of watching
the other video film productions definitely influenced how they thought
about their own—or at least what they were prepared to say about this.
There was a kind of “decentering” here: thinking about their own interpre
-
tations of other people’s productions encouraged them to think about how
other people would think about theirs. In particular, it led them to consider
the relationship between intentions and results, to recognize that some of
their intentions were not clear or had changed as the work progressed, and
that some of the outcomes did not correspond to their initial intentions and
may even have led to them being misinterpreted. The mere fact that there
was a real audience out there somewhere—and indeed that they them
-
selves were a real audience for somebody else’s productions—seems to
have helped them evaluate their own work in a more thoughtful and
critical way.
Pedagogic Implications
Equilibrium was received with considerable enthusiasm by our fellow
researchers. When we came to select productions for the sampler that was
subsequently used with all the groups, there was no hesitation in including
it. As we shall see below, the responses of the young people who saw it were
fairly diverse, but the adults, in general, rated it very highly. Bea’s video
film was also chosen as the focus for an online chat session between a group
of German undergraduate students and Bea herself, and Bea subsequently
received what can only be described as fan mail from this group. Interest-
ingly, much of this subsequent discussion focused on the “symbolism” of
the video film, to an extent that even Bea herself found rather pretentious
and amusing.
We would like to suggest a couple of notes of caution about this. First, it
should be emphasized that unlike many of the other young people in our
study, Bea is middle class and a high achiever in terms of formal education.
Both her production and her subsequent contributions to the interpretation
discussion reflect the fact that she has a quasi-academic orientation toward
“art.” This is not in any way to suggest that this orientation is invalid—or to
dismiss it as “just middle class” or “just high achieving.” It is, however, to
suggest that it is partial and that it is a form of knowledge that not all young
people will possess, or indeed want (or feel they need) to possess. We
would caution against the temptation merely to validate Bea’s knowledge,
or indeed to celebrate it. On the contrary, we need to find ways of valuing
the full range of competencies, tastes, and motivations that young people
bring to media production, rather than privileging those that are closest to
our own.
470 Television & New Media / November 2003
Second, we should emphasize that Equilibrium is an individual produc
-
tion. While it does largely conform to the VideoCulture assignment (the
theme of opposites attract, the lack of verbal language), in this respect it
does not: the fact that she did not have to negotiate with others allowed Bea
a considerable freedom. To state the obvious, this is a fairly unusual situa
-
tion, given the limited resources that are generally available in youth work,
and we would argue that there are several problems in taking this individu
-
alistic, privatized approach as a model for cultural production by young
people. For political and pedagogical reasons, we would wish to insist on
the importance of collective production and to challenge the mystique that
typically surrounds the notion of the individual “artist”—a mystique that,
as we have indicated, is one in which Bea was keen to locate herself. Ulti
-
mately, Bea conforms to a particular fantasy of what creative young people
should be like: she is an artist, an auteur, in the making. For all its attraction,
this is a fantasy that may have damaging educational consequences, partic
-
ularly for young people who do not share Bea’s economic and social
advantages.
In this latter respect, we need to raise the question of how young people
learn to communicate in this medium. In the view of the course tutor, it was
the Opposites Attract group that has in fact learned most—at least in terms of
what the tutor claimed she had been attempting to teach. Sinead, Richard,
and Siobhan had developed an ability to use the conventions of continuity
editing to tell a simple story, which had been one of the aims of the exercise,
and while Bea had not set out to do this, it is certainly debatable whether
she learned anything that she did not already know. Here again, we need to
avoid the temptation to merely celebrate youthful “creativity” and pay
closer attention to the kinds of learning that it might entail.
Researching Reception
In the summer of 1999, twelve New York City adolescents were brought
together in a community access television studio to view the two samplers
of youth video productions selected by the VideoCulture research team for
exchange and interpretation. Four New York University–based researchers
asked these fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds to describe the content or
topic of each of the video films, to identify and justify what they liked and
disliked about each production, to suggest what they might do differently
as producers themselves, and to specify what they would say to the youth
producers in the participating countries. The titles of the video films were
not revealed until after the screening and discussion.
Generally, and understandably, the New York City youths had varied
responses to the video films. While mostly black and Latino and living in
households with lower incomes, they had diverse backgrounds and life
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 471
circumstances, and each of them had a unique point of view and style of
interacting. Thus, they did not always agree on what these video films were
about, whether they liked them, or why. In addition, group dynamics
played a role in how comfortable and competent participants felt about dis
-
cussing different aspects of these films (Buckingham 1993, 1996), so some
voices prevailed while others were less dominant. It is difficult to represent
the complexity of these interpretations in the space of a short article (for
other reports on these youths’ interpretations of VideoCulture produc
-
tions, see Fisherkeller, Butler, and Zaslow 2000; Zaslow and Butler 2002).
Here, we focus specifically on the young people’s responses to the youth-
oriented themes of the videos and their debatable sense of “otherness.”
Making Connections
Overall, these young people identified common aspects in the video
films that they associated with teen life as they knew it. The Contradiction,
Freedom, Our Life, Love, Push to Pull, and Joy and Grief were all seen to convey
something about the fun and difficulties of social interactions in different
contexts. Admittedly, issues of relationships and the dynamics of socializ-
ing are not exclusive to teen experience, but these youths made particular
connections with situations reminiscent of their own lives. For example,
New York City youths found the school in The Contradiction to be familiar
because of how it depicted peers grouping together and because it looked
“boring” like their own schools. Likewise, they assumed the young people
in Freedom were enjoying themselves because they trusted each other as
friends and could therefore take certain risks, like walking on train tracks
and “bothering” horses. In the case of Being Young, these youths thought
that the boy seen on the train was either dreaming about or remembering
good times with friends at a party or shopping. These youths understood
the melancholy of love and yearning that Die Liebe represented. The video
film Push to Pull seemed most familiar to these youths in the way the narra
-
tive, though problematic, represented the anxieties of meeting another
person in what seemed like a “date” situation.
Communicating “youth experience” was stressed as a general goal for
the youth producers to accomplish, and the New York City youths were
told that they would be viewing media products created by other young
people expressing something about their lives—which may have “cued”
the New York City youths to focus on precisely these elements in their dis
-
cussion. However, these youths’ connections with the youth producers’
experiences also prompted them to suggest potential changes in the video
films that would conform to their particular emotional and aesthetic sensi
-
bilities. For example, Push to Pull conveyed a linear chronology of events
about two people meeting (which seemed prearranged), a situation they
472 Television & New Media / November 2003
associated with their own. Yet the New York City teens questioned the
patience of the young woman waiting to meet someone, and they won
-
dered why the young man traveling to the young woman threw away the
flowers but then continued to locate the young woman. Some females in the
New York City group were especially vocal on these matters of narrative
and would have had the young woman in the video film get mad or leave
before the young man arrived.
These youths responded similarly to the video film Joy and Grief, a tale of
grieving about a friend’s death. Here, a boy who appears to be distraught
over a good friend’s death due to illness acts out a suicide by slicing his
wrists. Some New York City youths were critical of the closing credits scene
in which the “suicide” boy smiles at the camera while he eats what must be
fruit jam from his wrist, jam that was meant to represent blood in the con
-
text of the video film story. This epilogue, which explicitly referenced the
“made-up” component of the video film, detracted from the expression of
grief the New York City viewers thought the video film needed to maintain,
even through the credits. The idea of death and dying is not strange to these
New York City youths. Indeed, some of these youths at the time were
involved in constructing a video film about their own experiences with
death, whether a violence-related death or the untimely death of a family
member or friend due to terminal illness (see R.I.P.: Teens coping with death
1999). Since death had been deemed a subject worthy of producing a seri-
ous documentary that featured their experiences, perhaps the New York
City youths did not like the “mood-lightening” aspect of the boy smiling
and eating jam from his wrist in Joy and Grief.
The New York City viewers also associated death with other topics they
saw as extrinsically connected to teen life and that they viewed as serious
matters. Most of these youths assumed that issues of “drugs, sex, and vio
-
lence” were common for urban, lower income teens. Viewing Equilibrium,
Ganxtamovie, Overdose, The Angel and the Devil, and Self-Destruct, they
argued that the teens in these video films contended with drugs, sex, and
violence and that dealing with these matters is difficult. As one suggested,
all teens have “a hard life.” Thus, it appears that these youths see the teens
in the video film confronting a complex of responsibilities and living with a
good deal of stress and strain, like themselves. Along these lines, the video
film Freedom was viewed as an escape from the stresses and strains that
most young people experience. Freedom showed how youths could relax
and enjoy themselves if they were away from the city and just having fun
with friends. Most did not think that young people actually lived the life
portrayed in Freedom: they assumed that young people, like themselves,
must need to travel to these idylls and therefore would need money to do
so. Perhaps these New York City youths, whose lives are circumscribed
economically, assume that many other young people’s lives are similarly
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 473
constrained, and so any youth-produced video films will reflect this.
Indeed, in the United States, urban teens’ opportunities for engaging in
audiovisual communications occur almost exclusively in community
access contexts serving lower income neighborhoods. Rarely are adoles
-
cents from different socioeconomic classes brought together in these
endeavors.
Thus, despite some of their critiques of the video films, most of the New
York City teens might have been intent to find resonance with the video
film producers, whom they presumed were beleaguered like themselves.
These are similarities they might not seek in commercial or even adult-
sanctioned educational media productions in the United States, even if
they feature teens, since these young viewers assume such products have
been produced by adults about youths, rather than by youths. Indeed, an
argument was made by New York participants that these VideoCulture
productions, especially those about drugs, would be more influential and
meaningful in educational contexts since they were made by adolescents,
not adults. (A similar argument is found in Tally and Kornblum 1997.)
Some suggested that adults cannot communicate with teens as effectively
as youths themselves because, as one female participant explained, things
are different for adolescents now, compared to when current adults were
young. She argued that adults cannot really understand what is going on
for youths today, even though adults, such as her own mother, claim under-
standing when they invoke their own younger experiences. What is perti-
nent about this explanation is the logic it presents: these U.S. youths are
arguing that youths who live in other regions and speak different lan-
guages are more effective at communicating with them, compared to the
adults in their own country, and even their own homes.
Yet their connections with the youth producers as youths might also be
explained by their experiences in a city of multiple cultures and regional
histories. New York City teens are far from homogeneous: they come from a
range of different family and cultural backgrounds—a situation character
-
istic of large urban areas. Indeed, most of these young people, or their par
-
ents or grandparents, had emigrated from other countries in recent years.
Given these contexts, perhaps these youths found points of connection in
video film products created by “others”: they appeared to recognize a “we”
even while they acknowledged that the films came “from another place”
(whether that place was perceived as geographical, social, or emotional).
Looking for Differences
Many of these New York City adolescents also looked to find elements in
the video films that were “different” from their experiences, and some
-
times if they did not find these different elements, they suggested they
474 Television & New Media / November 2003
should be there. On one hand, they noticed the different kinds of cars,
buses, tramways, and other technologies that are different from the United
States in general or New York City in particular. Thus, they thought the car
and the motor scooter in Ganxtamovie looked like they were from “the Third
World.” They acknowledged that this might be a matter of access for the
youth producers (none of these youths owned a car and would find it diffi
-
cult to access one if needed for their own production purposes). Nonethe
-
less, they judged that drug dealers with the amount of money and drugs
depicted in the story should have had a more upscale car, referencing their
sense of the reality in the United States—or perhaps reality according to
Hollywood films or music videos. Also, New York City viewers noted that
the guns used in this video film looked very different from those that would
be found in any American representation of drug trafficking: semiauto
-
matic weapons would have to appear in such a scenario to be taken
seriously by these youths.
On the other hand, many of these young viewers identified features of
the video films that they felt should have been “different” from their expec-
tations. While most of them recognized popular songs and understood the
tone of most of the music used in the video films, some youths did not
appreciate the inclusion of familiar pop melodies (as in Joy and Grief)or
music television formats (as in Our Life). One participant suggested that the
producers should have included music in the video films from their own
cultures, so that the viewers would know that “they [the producers] are just
as important as us.” This statement points implicitly to an awareness of the
dominance of American music in the global marketplace. It also references
discourses about how cultures should maintain their unique forms of
expression in the face of globalization. For example, some New York City
youths appreciated how Our Life showed young people making their own
music but also felt that the lyrics and format were too much like music
television in the United States.
Thus, while these youths wanted to make connections with the video
film producers as youths, some wanted the youth producers to express
aspects particular to their cultures as well. Indeed, what was valued highly
in the video films were expressions and features of teens “being them
-
selves” or “doing whatever they wanted.” This is one reason that Equilib
-
rium was selected by the majority of youths as one they liked in particular.
Even though they did not completely understand this video film, they
found it creative and attention grabbing due to the costumes, the makeup,
the camera work, and editing and because it was sexually suggestive. But,
especially, the youths admired how the Equilibrium producers seemed to be
saying “this is who we are” strongly and clearly, and “who they are” was
seen as self-expressively different and bold. Indeed, this aspect of the video
film prompted one participant to suggest that Equilibrium be presented to
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 475
adults as an exemplary statement about the nature of youths, so that adults
could better understand adolescent experiences.
Culturally Situated Interpretations
Perhaps the New York City adolescents’ interest in having “difference”
and self-expression represented in the video films can be partially
explained by commercial exhortations that surround them in the United
States and by the discourse they often encounter on the nature of adoles
-
cence. There is an interesting coincidence here between the emphasis on
“individuality” in commercial culture and that which characterizes tradi
-
tional arguments about artistic expression. In the United States, advertising
campaigns, especially those geared toward young people, are laden with
images and messages promoting individuality and personal freedom,
albeit in paradoxical ways. As features of advertising, these sensibilities are
to be fulfilled by the consumption of commercial goods, whether those
goods take the form of consumable products or media material. Perhaps
these young New Yorkers—who live in a city that is saturated with ads and
is an advertising industry headquarters—are responding to the ideology of
consumer capitalism, a system that relies on consumers believing in the
free expression afforded by the marketplace. Meanwhile, youths and ado-
lescents in the United States are also often spoken about as intensely
invested in self-expression. The discourse on this amorphous group sug-
gests that if they are true to themselves, then they are each different and
unique in a particular way. Popular literature and counseling advice for
youths, if not about substance abuse or sexual misbehavior, might be sum-
marized by a slogan such as “be yourself.” Maybe these young people’s
interest in and desire to see (what they consider to be) unique expressions
of self are part of this general discourse.
Whether participating in prevailing consumer or youth discourses
about individuality and self-expression, the New York City youths are also
contributing, perhaps unknowingly, to debates about the worth and nature
of creative endeavors. All works of art are subjected to a level of scrutiny
that ponders in what way a creative product or endeavor uniquely chal
-
lenges or elaborates on established standards of craft while illuminating
some aspect of the human situation. Even though it may be unconscious
and utterly intuitive, these youths are critiquing the video films in terms of
their artistic authenticity and thus indicating that they would want to
imbue their own creations with a unique sensibility. However, these young
people’s discussions about VideoCulture creations only hint at such
notions. Without their producing their own audiovisual texts, our under
-
standing of the themes and aesthetics these New York City adolescents
would want to convey to “others” is limited. In addition, without gathering
476 Television & New Media / November 2003
“other” responses to New York City youths’ audiovisual creations, we can
-
not know how their expressions would elicit recognition, critique, and
learning from “others.”
Implications and Directions for the Future
Production
All in all, thirty-six video self-productions emerged from this project
between 1997 and 1999, involving different topics and modes of narrative
and stylistic expression. The quality and style of these films are partly a
reflection of the particular contexts in which they were produced and of the
individuals or groups involved. The style of symbolic processing young
people employed developed from their existing knowledge and previous
experiences of media genres, although it also reflects broader social and
cultural differences. In view of the fact that most young people involved in
the project had no previous experience of video production, there were
bound to be significant differences between their initial intentions and the
final results. On the basis of our data, it would be hard to generalize about
this. However, the style of production and the dramatic theme or concept
the young people selected are clearly connected with the subjective rele-
vance of media models and genres, as well as the respective style of the
media tutor or facilitator.
The experience of the production workshops clearly shows that it is pos-
sible for young people—with the help of a qualified media educational ad-
visor—to produce meaningful montage or collage-like video films within a
few days. While planning one workshop—in which two 16-year-old girls
produced the video Love—Holzwarth and Maurer (2003) developed a
method of fostering aesthetic creativity in a playful way:
The procedure of first taking everyday images as a starting-point, instead of
striving for an immediate orientation towards a constructed plot (e.g. using a
storyboard or script), enables the producers to see everyday life in a new light
by trying out unusual angles and different distances. Youths come to know
film as a means of art which does not have a firm meaning or content in ad
-
vance. (P. 164)
Holzwarth and Maurer argued in favor of an associative, exploratory ap
-
proach, which encourages nonlinear forms of symbolization rather than
narrative. However, this depends on tutors or facilitators who can give sen
-
sitive and competent advice, who provide the young people with aesthetic
input on different levels and in different situations, and who make sure that
there is a constructive working atmosphere.
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 477
The support of tutors should not only be concerned with the visual di
-
mension. A subtly differentiated handling of music and sound should be
imparted as well. Our analysis suggests that media teachers need a far
better knowledge of this area if they are to provide young people with cre
-
ative alternatives. Thus, Münch and Bommersheim (2003) wrote in an ex
-
pert report on the use of music in VideoCulture productions,
The adolescents know about and use a large number of techniques relating to
music and sound. At the same time, however, it became clear that these tech
-
niques are still quite limited in relation to the potential possibilities in this
field: here,we particularly noticed the stereotypical use of musical genres and
the extensive renunciation of an audio language that would stand out against
the visual level in order to “speak for itself.” (P. 341)
Young people’s knowledge as “consumers” of popular music does not
automatically result in an active and productive use of music in their
own work. Accurate input, exercises, and suggestions are needed to use
music, in conjunction with the visual level, as an independent form of sym-
bolization.
Reception
When interpreting the partner films, the production groups involved
used very different styles of interpretation. Here again, it is difficult to gen-
eralize about this. At least in terms of the German interpretation groups,
several conclusions can be made, however. Broadly speaking, a subjective
ascription of meaning seems to be connected particularly with the capabil
-
ity (or the possibility) of recognizing personal experiences and forms of
knowledge within the text. Here, understanding a video film is not reduced
to the cognitive understanding of the content and the (suspected) intention.
There are also emotional-intuitive processes that come into play as soon as
symbolic forms are perceived that evoke associations with personal, real-
life experiences:
It seems as if the viewers were only able to assign a subjective meaning to a
video—whether on a cognitive or an emotional level—if they were able to re
-
late to it in a personal way. In this process of getting emotional access, which
involves attraction as well as disapproval, the music used in the video seems
to be of great importance for many viewers. (Witzke 2003, 191)
When asked, some of the young people preferred “open” productions to
“closed” ones. That is, if the “message” was too unambiguous (bold and
simple) and did not leave enough space for self-made ascriptions of mean
-
ing, these young people often expressed disapproval. Here again, however,
478 Television & New Media / November 2003
there seem to be individual differences in young people’s preferences that
cannot simply be related to broader social and cultural factors. On the basis
of their case study as well as other productions, Holzwarth and Maurer
(2003) argued,
The experience of our case study production Our Life indicates that it is
possible to impart emotions and experiences without words across
national boundaries. The ratio of openness to closure in this film seems to be
particularly suitable in terms of inviting other young people to relate to it. It
also seems that the subject of “love”—as a cross-culturally relevant area of ex
-
perience—as well as the use of common symbols would have enabled trans-
cultural processes of acquisition and connection. (P. 166)
A comparative evaluation of three film interpretations showed that girls
are more likely to develop an emotional access to video films, whereas boys
put more emphasis on formal aspects. The first results of the multimedia
questionnaire also indicate that gender-related differences have more in-
fluence on preferences for certain videos and forms of symbolization than
differences of education, age, and culture. Nevertheless, this questionnaire
also indicated that “the adolescents showed common reactions to audio-
visual symbols used in young people’s video productions. This might be
interpreted as a confirmation of the assumption that young people make
use of an interculturally understandable, audio-visual symbolic language”
(Müller 2003, 314). And finally, ascriptions concerning the attractiveness of
certain audiovisual symbols seem to vary according to what type of “video
viewer” one is. Thus, one significant (and almost exclusively male) type of
video viewer is characterized by a fondness for action- and violence-related
material in videos (Müller 2003).
While for most young people the VideoCulture project was a welcome
opportunity to produce their first videos, the selection and the exchange of
the productions proved to be a prolonged process. Future projects should
find ways of publishing these productions immediately via the internet
and of facilitating dialogues about these productions that are critical as well
as appreciative. In this way, they would not be exposed to a selection pro
-
cess of any kind, and this could enhance the communicative dimension of
the project’s approach, which would definitely be in the young people’s in
-
terest. As Gina Lamb (2003), a video artist from Los Angeles, concluded,
If this project continues, it would make the most sense if the videos were
streamed on the Internet with message boards for each video where the youth
can post their comments. . . . Opening up access through the Internet will al
-
low the project to grow more rapidly and entice youth to use technology as a
creative tool for dialogue rather than receivers of entertainment. (P. 265)
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 479
At the same time, media educators and youth workers need to support and
encourage youth media production activity that nurtures and nudges
youths to learn about themselves, others, and differential modes of com
-
munication. In a globalized, media-saturated, and deeply complex world,
helping all youths express themselves and to understand others, using all
available technologies and strategies, is a goal that is not only desirable but
necessary.
Note
1. The German project team (researchers) included Prof. Dr. Horst Niesyto (pro
-
ject concept and coordinator), Prof. Dr. Renate Müller, Peter Holzwarth, Björn Mau
-
rer, and Margrit Witzke (Ludwigsburg University of Education). The international
partners were Prof. Dr. David Buckingham and Issy Harvey (Institute of Education,
London University), Dr. JoEllen Fisherkeller (New York University), Gina Lamb
(video artist, Los Angeles), Jana Hnilicova (Prague), and Dr. Andrea Karpati
(University of Budapest). JoEllen Fisherkeller would also like to acknowledge
Allison Butler, Marshall Weber, and Emilie Zaslow for their assistance on this pro-
ject. The project was sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Arts, Baden-
Württemberg.
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Horst Niesyto is a professor of education with special referenceto media education and
the head of the Media Centre at the University of Ludwigsburg, Germany. He has
published widely on aspects of youth research and media production by young people.
E-mail: niesyto_horst@ph-ludwigsburg.de; web site: http://www.phludwigsburg. de/
medien1/index.html.
David Buckingham is a professor of education and the director of the Centre for the
Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London Univer
-
sity. He has published several books on media education and on children’s relations
with the media. E-mail: d.buckingham@ioe.ac.uk; web site: http://www.ccsonline.
org.uk/mediacentre.
Niesyto et al. / VideoCulture 481
JoEllen Fisherkeller is an associate professor in the Department of Culture and Com
-
munication in the School of Education at New York University. She has many publi
-
cations that examine young people’s cultural experiences of media and media educa
-
tion projects. E-mail: jf4@nyu.edu; department web site: www.nyu.edu/education/
culturecomm/.
482 Television & New Media / November 2003
