A Rubric for Transcultural Visual Media Production

• In Event: Advances in Visual Communication Studies: New Challenges and New Frameworks

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to create a rubric from which researchers and filmmakers can begin producing media different from the existing English language, jargon-laden, instructional videos currently in use in the American healthcare industry. From this rubric, one video detailing a clinic visit was produced, screened for a diverse audience and evaluated for its efficacy. This video utilized only images to convey information in an attempt to circumvent the confusion that may result while viewing media in a foreign language. The details of the video’s screening and feedback sessions are included in a separate paper. This paper focuses on the video production rubric and the visual communication theories that provided its framework. The overarching strategy behind this production guide was to create media that was more comprehensible to a culturally diverse viewership by excluding the use of some representations (such as verbal or written language, symbols, graphs or diagrams) because their meanings are arbitrary and culturally assigned. Instead, this rubric recommends presenting procedures in as direct and uncomplicated a manner as possible. To reduce the tedium of such a straightforward approach, the resultant video was structured as a narrative involving characters that model appropriate and inappropriate behavior, allowing for the occasional opportunity for physical comedy. This paper lists each of the formal filmmaking strategies considered in this rubric (shot composition, editing, mise-en-scène, representation, and casting) and details the workability of these tactics during a film shoot.

Author

• Rachel Schaevitz, Temple University