dear fandom, please help me be awesome

So here's my situation: I'm in an M.A. program in English Education, preparing to be an English teacher, which this semester mostly involves taking classes (although that is about to change for 15 hours a week, which is part of why this appeal, as will soon become clear). For one class, I have a not-quite-final project due in eight weeks with extremely open guidelines, but the core project is to present...something, in a multimodal format (engaging more than one sense), on the subject of literacy, probably but not necessarily focusing on teaching and learning in a school/classroom context. Because I am a ridiculous person with no respect for my own time or need for sleep, I really really want to make a vid.

Specifically, I want to make a massively multisource vid examining some aspect of literacy through any of a wide variety of possible lenses that I haven't decided between yet, because I got this idea this morning, but which include historical, multicultural, political, new media and/or remix culture, many other things. Actually whatever I do will probably end up being political.

I am 100% confident that I can do this and do it well, and I think it's a brilliant approach to this assignment in particular and will let me meaningfully incorporate almost all of the texts we're reading. The problem, of course, is that I've never made a multisource vid before, and I've definitely never made one with a deadline of less than eight weeks, a full three of which I expect to spend trying to fix technical problems. Three at minimum. Probably four. But that's not even the main problem; the main problem is that the reason I've never made a multisource vid before is because I have an absolutely terrible visual memory, and also regular memory, and I can't come up with possible sources, especially since I almost never watch movies and haven't really seen that much TV.

And this is all made more difficult by the fact that my primary audience is my classmates, not fans, so I can't count on them knowing any of the sources or having any vid-watching experience, and I can't rely on context for almost anything. Obviously I would like to make it with a second layer so that many of the clips become even more meaningful when you know them, but that priority comes a distant second to making something other people in the class can understand. (Although I definitely do want to use the format to engage with the concept of 'literacy' beyond written text, and the experience of reading a vid.)

Basically, if this is going to have any chance of happening, I'm going to need help. A lot of help. I have to mostly crowdsource the entire brainstorm stage of gathering sources, because I just flat can't do it myself in the time I have. Obviously I will then watch this stuff and choose what to use and do the rest myself, so I feel like this is completely legitimate in terms of not asking the internet to do my homework.

Which brings us to my request: please help me find sources for clips of the things on this list, and please point other people to this post!

1. People reading or writing


2. People trying to read or write and having difficulty or failing


3. Text (written, typed, chiseled into a slab of stone, etc.) that's particularly visually interesting either in itself or in the way it's filmed, especially if there's some kind of motion involved


4. The above three items but with other kinds of texts, probably visual but not necessarily--anything that depicts the process of production, reproduction, reception, transformation of any kind of text, the development and practice of any kind of literacy (in a form that I can vid--so the process should be clearly and immediately visible in some way even if the text itself is not)


5. Classes happening in classrooms, especially if there's reading/writing happening but also just depictions of classroom teaching and learning (or not learning) in general

(EDIT: I've done some more planning and posted a slightly updated request list.)

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