How does digital editing help students develop their understanding of narrative?
by Carrie McMillan
Background
Secondary school in Devon; two Year 8 English pupils working on short film narratives from crime films.
Focus on
To draw on pupils' narrative competence in film and gauge its impact on their ability to compose print narratives. Makes connections with theoretical models of narrative: Metz and Propp. Actual task was to make a narrative out of Bogart clips.
Summary
- Pupils experienced problems with task, maybe because of: stand-alone nature of task; hands-off teaching; nature of task - mixing shots from different films set up insoluble problems around continuity.
- Leaving pupils to their own devices for fear that otherwise they might try and second guess the teacher may not work; they still try and second-guess the teacher, but they have even less to go on. Clear constraints help narrow down 'what teacher wants'.
- The pupils attempt to solve the problem of narrative discontinuity by using text screens.
- Pupils were asked where they get story ideas from; this enquiry could be followed up with real cases, examples.
- One student said their piece lacked 'connecting bits', ie. Barthes' 'satellite events'; do students need a language for syntagmatic variation?
- One student sees his work as closer to ICT than English, the other sees it as completely new. Neither saw a connection with English.
- Pair consistently talked about narrative function in film in ways that are rarely used in talk (or teaching) about prose fiction/print narrative. English teaching must capitalize on this.
