Field Preparations | MPA

The Multimodal Portfolio Assignment (MPA) is a two-part capstone assignment that serves as a multimodal companion to the methodology outlined in the research proposal. The two parts are designed to help students hone two interrelated skill sets. Part 1 draws upon the multimodal materials created through the five Field Study Assignments and challenges students to identify broader narrative, rhetorical, and analytical linkages between them. Part 2 focuses specifically on cultivating an enhanced video practice based on formal, aesthetic, and methodological intentionality.

During the Field Preparations session on 1 December, we’ll explore these issues in more detail. The feedback provided during the Crit presentation on 8 December will be primarily structured around these and related issues.

Part 1: Multimodal Storytelling

For this assignment, we ask you to critically review and engage with the audiovisual material produced for FSAs 1-5 in order to draw out patterns of significance that you have developed over the past few months. You should then consider the ideal way to combine these to offer a coherent narrative and/or argument that exemplifies your intended methodological approach. At least 3 FSAs should be engaged. Edit these together in a time-based presentation (approx 3 minutes).

This exercise contributes to further developing the following skills:

• Editing and montage
• Building scenes and sequences
• Structuring a time-based ethnography
• Data management
• Data analysis and interpretation

Part 2: Thinking with a Camera

Pragmatically, the choices we make when using our cameras in the field will fundamentally determine the options available to us during editing. This means that thinking with our cameras requires both anticipating beforehand what elements would best represent the social realities under study and also cultivating the art of noticing unexpected aspects of these realities while doing research. Put another way, this is the interplay between intentionality and improvisation. As such, you should demonstrate a commitment to a formal strategy or style that you intend to incorporate during fieldwork (as described in your written proposal) and experiment with its feasibility and potential in a short video (approx 3 minutes).

For this exercise, we encourage you to think through the following:

• Methodology
• Formal rigor
• Positionality
• Intentionality

Please include:

• A leader at the beginning of the piece
• Your name
• A five-second slug in between both exercises
• Subtitles (if necessary, though we encourage you not to rely too heavily on speech and voice)
• Output as a video file
• The combined file should not exceed 7 minutes.
• Name your file MPA_firstname-lastname.mp4
• Upload your MPA directly to Kaltura Media Gallery following these instructions

We’ll collectively discuss the assignment during the Crit presentation on 8 December by focusing on the issues and themes highlighted above.