15 Second Place

Around the corner, up the street, down the lane – capture the mood of where you are.
15 Second Place reflects the idea that no-one experiences the same place in the same way. Any one location can have many moods and tell many stories. Armed with a handheld device, anyone can be transformed into a diarist, reporter, documenter, artist contributing over time to the collective online experience of place.
Mood is described as a term used synonymously with atmosphere to indicate the prevailing feeling or frame of mind. Mood is an intrinsic element in the creation of meaning through the moving image.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) received funding from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to develop premium content for the FUSE portal. FUSE enables teachers to Find, Use and Share quality Education resources.
With the support of this funding, ACMI created 15 Second Place, a new website and free app compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad officially launched in August 2011.
15 Second Place seeks to engage students - young people - people to create 15 seconds of video footage of a place around the corner, up the street or down the lane. The online project encourages them to playfully investigate physical spaces and their diverse cultural, social, political and historical aspects. They can reflect on their connection to place and respond creatively to any space. 15 Second Place filmmakers can also test their skills by entering the Challenges Competition for the chance to win exciting ACMI prizes.
EDUCATION
Recognising the significance of place is fundamental to gaining an understanding of environment, culture, heritage and identity. Students can respond to the mood or feel of a place by capturing a single moment in place and time, developing their storytelling skills in a way that is uniquely inquiry based and student-led.
The Educators’ section of the site offers key questions, suggested activities and creative approaches to motivate students to create their 15 seconds. Teachers can present material and organise activities around different Challenges and Themes in a variety of ways to suit students' interests and needs. For discussion about new technologies and classroom practice with ACMI’s screen educators, teachers can join the ACMI Educators’ Lounge which supports ACMI’s web 2.0 presence.
THEMES
15 Second Place showcases the stories of selected places through themed interviews, images and video footage. Users can choose to go ‘Behind the Scenes’ to hear the inside story about places and transforming place from a selection of over 30 interviews with artists, performers, curators, filmmakers and creative professionals. Talks about flash performance, street art, projections and public art spaces provide inspiration.
MOOD
How does your street look at 6am or at midnight? How is it transformed by time, season or day of the week? The 15 Second Library becomes a fabulous crowd-sourced resource for people to create and share their own real and imagined landscapes that can be linked to mood; curious, detached, playful, wild, nostalgic. 15 Second Place inspires and empowers the user to think about how the world around them feels and how that mood can be translated and shared via the moving image.
CHALLENGES
Each Theme and Challenge has an Activity Sheet. Key questions provide prompts to initiate thinking about the topic. Creative approaches to producing 15 second clips outline ideas for student and classroom activities. SMS prompts give on-the-spot ideas and can also be given out as envelope instructions as part of the shoot.
The Words on the Street Challenge invites the participant to identify words present in the world around them, upload to the site and then string sentences together using the playlist function to create video wordplay between challengers.
DESIGN
The design of 15 Second Place is intended to reflect the culture of street art and how public art and the way in which it informs place remains important to mood, culture, belonging and identity.  With the call to action ‘Take Me Places’ 15 Second Place also reveals glimpses of the world that the site invites you to participate with - contemplative, serene and playful places, urban settings, hidden laneways and secret locations.
THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM
Making and responding to multimedia can assist in the development of critical thinking, analysis, observation and listening skills in students while building competency in research, information gathering, technology and communication. Multimedia is an ideal medium for generating ideas as it facilitates social connection and online collaboration.
15 Second Place invites students to upload 15 seconds to the site, comment, share and tag their own and others’ interpretations of places – with a place, mood and theme.
Using the E5 Instructional model for Victorian Government Schools as a springboard, 15 Second Place translates the 5 principles – Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate of this model into a web 2.0 site that enables teachers and students to utilise vibrant content uploaded by their peers, be inspired by footage, challenges and themes that motivate them to create and contribute by sharing their own videos.
USER EXPERIENCE
After exploring the videos, activities, themes and resources, there are four main actions that the site provides for the user:

• FIND your location: Source the place for your 15 seconds of video footage around the corner, up the street or down the lane.
• SHOOT your 15 second video: Capture a mood, tell a story of a place at a time using the moving image.
• UPLOAD & share your video to 15 Second Place.
• CREATE your own playlist: Express your mood about a city, tell a story of how a place has changed over time, or create a new story (abandoned spaces, main streets, crossroads) to start creating playlists.

Utilising geolocation technology and google maps, the15 Second Place app empowers anyone with a handheld device to film and upload 15 seconds of video to the site while standing in the shoot location.
15 Second Place reflects the idea that no-one experiences the same place in the same way. Any one location can have many moods and tell many stories. Armed with a hand-held device, anyone can be transformed into a diarist, reporter, documenter, artist contributing over time to the collective online experience of place.