The Truman Show: Analysing Shots

The Truman Show is a Prescribed Text that currently features as an option in Module B: Close Study of a Text for HSC Standard English. 

 

Prior to the the current syllabus options, while reflecting and thinking about ideas, I put together a resource for previous curriculum where the text could be looked at in combination with Reality TV shows. It covers things like representation of ideas, visually constructing meaning, creating a narrative through editing, and examining the relationship between composer and responder. You know, the usual stuff! If you remember the Distinctively Visual elective then you'll know what I'm on about. 

What follows is an assessment / class activity idea. It focuses on the way in which meaning is constructed on the screen as part of a wider unit that could be used to look at Reality TV. I love Reality TV and the way in which it crafts narratives out of footage that is ostensibly meant to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It's so blatantly without grace or scruples that I find it endlessly entertaining in a throw-your-popcorn-at-the-TV kind of way. 

 

We know, of course, that there is nothing remotely real about Reality TV but this is also part of why it's such fertile ground for students to study. I would argue that it's part and parcel of the same need to teach our students today about fake news and the way in which the media manipulates imagery to impose their own narratives. 

 

Anyway, I've digressed enough. 

The attached task involves students taking three screenshots from The Truman Show and writing 250-300 words on each one, describing how the composer has used visual techniques to create meaning, the wider context of the shot and how it fits into an edited sequence, and generally conveying an understanding of how the composer has represented ideas and themes related to the text. 

I've had to remove the outcomes as they were from an older syllabus but I'm sure it could be adapted to the current syllabus easily enough. You'll note also that there is an 'Example of a Full Mark Response' included at the end of the task... this has been taken from My Kitchen Rules (one of the related texts we looked at - the dinner party scenes are great for demonstrating to students how 'frankenbites' are used to impose invented narratives). I was going to delete it before I uploaded it here but I figured there was no harm in including it - it shows some of the things students can talk about it and is useful for modelling what a good response could look like. 

Here's the task - Task Idea.

I also gathered a whole bunch of screenshots together from The Truman Show. Even if you don't care about the task idea, you might at least find these screenshots useful - Truman Show Screenshots. The beauty of screenshots is that they come under free usage in terms of copyright. 

Disclaimer: The above resources have been created or adapted specifically for this blog in my own spare time.