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Basic teaching techniques

The basic teaching techniques were first published in Moving Images in the Classroom, in 2000. They are designed to help you unravel the codes and conventions of the moving image, and enable you to use film and television texts more effectively in the classroom. Used in conjunction with the teaching guidance in this resource and notes relating to each of the films, they will help you to make the most of studying the films.

In addition to the techniques described in Moving Images in the Classroom (Freeze frame, Sound and image, Spot the shots, Top and tail, Attracting audiences, Generic translations, Cross-media comparisons and Simulation), we have now added two further techniques: Pause and predict, and Compare, contrast, combine.

Basic teaching techniques resource (PDF, 420kb)

In the section about each film you will find links to key questions to use when discussing the film, and some specific suggestions for using basic teaching techniques.

The following notes suggest further ways of interrogating moving image media in the classroom with the benefit of picture-grabbing software and interactive whiteboards.

Using still images

An extension of the technique called Freeze frame is to separate the frame from the film altogether as a still image. This can be isolated and played with electronically, on an interactive whiteboard (if playing the DVD from an external player, click the 'print screen' or 'capture' button), or projected as part of a PowerPoint file. In either case, students (or teachers) could annotate stills, perhaps using different colours to highlight different dimensions of the shot. Stills can either be created through the laborious process of digitising the film and taking stills from Movie Maker or iMovie, or grabbing stills direct from the DVD using proprietary software, such as CyberLink PowerDVD (PC), Snapz Pro X (MAC), or free DVD capture software – only for Mac computers though (http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/software.php3).

A lower-tech (but more portable and accessible) option is to print and laminate stills for students to sequence, compare, mull and argue over. A range of still images from the films in this pack are included with the film notes.

The types of activity stills are suited to include:

• Sequencing: giving students randomly chosen shots from a film and asking them to place them in order. The sequence doesn't have to match the sequence in the film, and varying sequence could be used to discuss how the order changes the meaning conveyed.
• Predicting: take key frames from the beginning or the end of the film (for example, the shot of the police accident sign at the end of Accident; the two musicians at the start of 7.35 in the Morning) or from dramatic moments in the film.

7.35 in the Morning

• Annotating: to analyse shot size or composition, for example; or to interpret, for example by adding thought bubbles (such as to the close-up of the young guy's face at the end of Accident).
• Specific focus: on setting (the shots of London at the start of Accident) or character (the silhouette of the girl at the start of About a Girl).

About a Girl

• As dramatic backdrop for re-enacting scenes (easier with a ceiling-mounted projector!).

Digitising and re-purposing film

Film-makers have given permission for the films in the compilation to be digitised and re-purposed, as follows:

School-use Repurposing Rights

The right to edit, manipulate, repurpose, dub, mix and authorise others to do so within an educational establishment for the purposes of instruction. The resulting products must not be distributed outside the school context or sold.

Inexpensive software for ripping DVDs makes it possible to manipulate film materials in digital format. Digitising and 'intervening' in texts is thus an exciting new avenue for film - and English - studies more widely. (An excellent guide to this approach is Textual Intervention: Critical and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies, Rob Pope [Professor of English at Oxford Brookes University], Routledge, 1995.)

'Ripping' film from DVD is legal where you have bought and own the source material, and providing you don't distribute or sell it. For Macs, software such as Cinematize or Mac the Ripper allows users to take out segments of film from a DVD, and in the latter case, convert it to a malleable format such as .avi or mpeg4. PCs connected to a WinTV USB hub, or Pinnacle Studio can import and digitise film from a variety of source formats, including VHS and analogue TV signals.

Once digitised, the question is what to do with the material. The editing applications iMovie and Windows Movie Maker come free with Apple Macs of recent vintage and Windows XP respectively and both can import digital movie files. Once in those programmes, you can:

• Take sequences and cut them up, putting shots out of order for students to re-sequence;
• Cut out the soundtrack and add new tracks, or record voice-overs in character or as DVD 'director's commentary';
• Create 'live stills' - still shots along the timeline, with recorded voice-over narration, as if for a children's story;
• Make trailers out of key shots.

Films digitised into Windows movie clips ( .wmv ) or QuickTime files can be imported into PowerPoint and used to compare representations, openings, settings from different films, or the same clips from a film played with different soundtracks.

A note on interactive whiteboards

Increasingly schools are being kitted out with interactive whiteboards, and these offer functionality for teaching with film that is very new. For example:

• The searchlight tool enables a partial viewing of a film screen. For a subtitled film this could be used to hide the titles so that students can infer the narrative from the visual information only.
• The eraser tool gives students the chance to reveal a part of the frame at a time.
• Print screen or image capture enables still frames to be instantly set up.

The major difference between IWBs and presentational software like PowerPoint, however, is in the possibility for moving objects around a screen.

• For example, in a Tell Me activity using a grid student responses to the soundtrack of one of the films could be brainstormed and listed on a whiteboard 'page'. These responses could then transferred to the next page into a people/places/story grid, and students could move words between the quadrants of the grid. After listening to soundtrack, students could watching a portion of the screen through a searchlight, then watch the opening two minutes. At each stage their responses could be gathered and written up on the whiteboard in different colours. At the end, check and discuss which information is constant throughout all viewings.

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