Teaching Film as a Skill

Hello again! Today I presented at the English Teachers Association 2018 Conference on a Film Studies English Elective for Stage 5. I'm not able to attach the PowerPoint here as it features pictures of students, however, if you click each of the links below you'll be able to access some of the resources covered. I've also included some additional stuff on film skills. 

Making a Zoetrope 

Close-Ups 

The 180 Degree Rule 

And, as a bonus, here is a summary of last year's presentation on Film Skills, which includes some of this stuff as well: Film Craft

I have some additional stuff for film study that will be released soon as a chapter in the textbook Charged with Meaning (2nd edition), so I recommend that too :)

Thanks!

Film Craft: Teaching Film as a Skill

Extract: 21st century learning practice in Australia has led to an increasing shift away from summative assessment of learning to the more authentic, project-based approach of assessment as learning. In regards to the study of film, this workshop demonstrates the ways in which frontloading of information and project-based learning can facilitate greater student efficacy in building skills for critical thinking, collaborative learning, and innovative problem-solving. Students move away from the identification and analysis of film techniques towards authentic application of cinematic skills in order to become active meaning-makers in regards to the grammar of film. The benefit of this multimodal approach to literacy demonstrates the continuing development of Project-Based Learning as the greatest tool at the disposal of teachers in striking an effective balance between the demands of the syllabus, enculturated practices dictated by policy, and the need to provide opportunities for students to cultivate competencies required in increasingly complex work spaces.

In other words, students learn to write film rather than write about it. This becomes evident through their application of learned skills in a collaborative project with their peers.

Here's my presentation on this from the ETA NSW 2017 Conference:

Resource: Film Craft PPT

Resource: Close-Up Instructions Activity Sheet  

Cross-Cutting resources:

Print on coloured paper. Students then edit the images together to create a storyboard sequence that incorporates too concurrent narratives. Thus, cross-cutting. See the PPT for more information.

More on specific film skills:

• Close-Ups blog post. 
• The 180 Degree Rule blog post.

For more detail, see the article 'Uncovering the Paradigm' in the academic journal English in Australia, Volume 52, No. 3.