Below are 10 strategies for supporting the teaching of film.

These are designed to support analysis of film that would be appropriate for Level 1 and Level 2 NCEA.

 

1) Getting the basics right

Make sure your students have a glossary of basic film terms:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html

 

Make sure they understand them!

Activity - Get students to work in pairs, and get them to use their cellphone to photograph or film a range of shot types, angles, and camera movements, then get them to work in fours, using one pair's footage to test the other pair!

 

Make sure you cover the basics in your film analysis:

Check out this very basic set of questions to guide students through film analysis.

Mean Creek questions.ppt

 

and ensure they always come back to the visual and verbal techniques!

Mean Creek - visual and verbal.doc

 

Get some ideas from the professionals:

Lots of great ideas in here, worth picking a few out.

Using film in the classroom.pdf

 

2) Understanding how the director is positioning the viewer

 

Activity - At all times, students need to be conscious of how the director is using a range of techniques to position or manipulate the viewer to have a specific emotional response. An easy way to introduce this idea to students is to look at pointedly emotive pieces of film, and then get students to pull apart the scenes. What visual and verbal techniques is the director employing to make the viewer feel scared or sad? Then select a scene from your studied film and get them to deconstruct how the director is getting the audience to feel a particular way about a person, place or event.

 

 

 

Activity - Working in fours, assign roles - one camera person, one sound designer, two performers. Get the students to use their cameras on their phones to portray the two performers as scary characters, then as weak characters etc etc. They may not use dialogue, they can only use sound effects, shot types and camera angles to achieve the emotion. This activity simply reinforces the idea of how the viewer is being positioned by visual and verbal film techniques.

 

3) Up the ante - discuss Mise-en-scene

 

Useful handout explaining mise-en-scene and some strategies for teaching it.

http://www.mediaed.org.uk/posted_documents/Teaching_mise_en_scene.htm

 

This video provides quite a clear explanation for students.

 

 

Activity - Choose a good example of mise-en-scene from your studied film. Pause it or capture a screen shot. Get students to adopt the role of art historian. Using the guide below (taken from Level 2 Art History) analyse the frame as you would a painting. This helps to reinforce the idea that there are many elements coming together to create effect. 

How to analyse a painting

 

4) Up the ante - discuss diegetic vs. non-diegetic sound

 

Check out this definition:

http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm

NB. Spellings vary sometimes it is refered to as diagetic and non-diagetic - either is acceptable (I think).

 

Activity - This famous scene makes good use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Read the definition provided above, then watch the provided scene.

Which sounds are non-diegetic? What is the effect of the non-diegetic sounds?

 

 

5) Using Digistore Learning Paths to develop close reading skills

 

Using a learning path to support the teaching and learning for close reading of a visual text

A learning path is a series of digital resources used together along with task instructions to guide students through a learning activity. Digistore is a NZ based library of digital resources designed to be used by educators. You will need a school password to create a learning path. The learning path example below is designed to be used to prepare students for the new Level One NCEA English Achievement Standard 1.11 Show understanding of visual and/or oral text(s) through close viewing and/or listening, using supporting evidence. This learning path was created by using the NCEA Achievement Standard (for the newly aligned standards) "B" task that is now available on TKI. For each new Achievement Standard and "A" task and a "B" has been created. The "A" task has been designed to be used as is, where as the "B" task is designed to be adapted to suit a teacher's own task. Check out the tasks available here and then look at the learning path here

 

Check out Digistore here and learn how to make a Learning Path here

 

6) Using film analysis from Youtube

 

There are many great examples of film analysis available on Youtube. Below is one example from Rob Ager. It is worth checking out Rob Ager's Youtube channel, as he has done many useful film anaylsis clips. You can check out his channel here.These resources are particularly useful for those students you would like to extend and get to explore psychological analysis of film.

 

He also has a interesting website. Check it out here.

 

 

7) Film essays - deconstructing exemplars, creating success criteria and using Assessment Reports

 

It always a good idea to start with the end in mind, and for this reason I recommend starting the Film essay journey with an exploration of exemplars.

Activity - Get students to read a range of Achieved, Merit and Excellence exemplars. Available here. Then get the students to create their own Achievement Criteria or success criteria to describe each level of essay. This success criteria can then be used for peer feedback and self-review.

 

Link to exemplars here.

 

It is a good idea to get students to engage with examiner's reports, particularly if they are aiming for Merit or Excellence.

 

Activity - Get students to read at least one Assessment Report. Available here. Then get them to transcribe it into their own language, you may like to co-construct a "student speak" version of the Assessment Report.

 

A handout like this might be useful to support this:

Assessment Report.doc

 

8) Film essays - planning the essay

 

It is important to ensure that students at any level are carefully scaffolded when planning and writing their first practice essay. I suggest, getting students to return to the exemplars, and using these as a starting point.

 

Check out this resources for possible sample essay plans:

Level One and Level Two Film Essay Resource.doc

 

9) Film essays - constructing the "magic" topic sentence

 

Creating a "magic sentence" involves the teacher or class co-constructing a table of sentence parts that can be combined to create a powerful topic sentence. Students choose one word/phrase and string them together. Students can add more and more to the "techniques" and "themes" columns as the year goes on.

 

Here is an example of a magic sentence table:

The Magic Sentence.doc

 

10) Bring it altogether - using a wiki and blogs

Why not share these strategies and resources with your students through your class wiki or intranet page? Also, consider getting students to complete their practice essays on student blogs. See the link below to find out a little more about how wikis and blogs can help to support your student's writing.

http://thevirtualclassroom.pbworks.com/Beyond-the-Virtual-Classroom

 

Quick tip - you can literally copy and paste these resources into your own wiki!