Writing

In the course of GCSE study, students' writing must include a variety of forms and genres and range across four 'writing triplets'. Some of this work is assessed as coursework, and some prepares them for the kinds of writing required for the terminal written exam. While all boards require the same broad coverage of styles, purposes and forms of writing, the modes of assessing specific kinds of writing varies. Therefore, one exam board may assess writing to 'explore, imagine and entertain' in coursework, and another may do so in the final exam.

The following suggestions offer a choice of forms, styles and audiences within each category of writing. They are intended to stimulate further thinking about tasks that might excite and inspire young writers. Each film includes more specific suggestions for activities that involve the development of literacy skills.

Explore, imagine, entertain

  • Write a diary of events or dramatic monologue from the viewpoint of a character seen in a film. The events may be the ones enacted in the film, or those which have led up to it or followed on from it. For example, in About a Girl diary writing either including or withholding the relationship that led to the pregnancy and birth. Or Jus' Gaps diary writing of the events that led to the split-up of Lucy and her boyfriend.
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Jus' Gaps

  • Write an account of the same events seen in a film from the contrasting viewpoints of two or more characters seen in it, or connected to the events in some way.
    Accounts could be from the points of view of the parents in any of the films where children or teenagers appear - The Most Beautiful Man in the World, The Man with the Beautiful Eyes, Two Cars, One Night, The First Time It Hits, The Little Things, About a Girl. This provides scope for sophisticated interweaving of narratives and the juxtaposition of different language styles, registers and idioms. A - perhaps exotic - variation on this is to retell events from the viewpoint of a non-speaking participant, such as a pet or piece of furniture. Obviously there are some students who would not feel at all comfortable with this degree of surrealism, but others find anthropomorphic tales give their imaginations full reign.
  • Set up an exchange of letters between characters relating to an incident seen in a film, or other non-fiction genres, like police report or witness statements for Accident.
    This is similar to above, and again offering the same possibilities for showing how different personalities, audiences and viewpoints can alter written style, but perhaps more manageable for some writers given the shorter component units.
  • Describe a location seen in a film.
    This can be particularly successful if a film uses montage to build up a sense of place (the opening shots of Accident), or if the writing task has been prepared for by still image analysis, because it encourages attention to detail. Similarly, if students tend to write narratives in which plot dominates, and the development of character and setting through detail tends to be overlooked, using still image analysis to explore how an audience's awareness of people and places depends on detail can help to redress the balance.
  • Write about a parallel event from the students' own lives to the one seen in a film, for example birthdays, odd neighbours, children they met on childhood holidays.
    It is a standard procedure to ask students to write about 'a significant encounter' or 'a remarkable event/day' when they have just read an account of something similar. However, the results can often be better if the starting point is a film.
  • Convert a film narrative into a short story, or a chapter from a novel, for a particular age group.
    This can highlight the issue of artistic choices and the writer's craft by forcing students to consider such matters as the naming of characters (assuming the characters have no names in the film); the appropriate mix of dialogue, description and narrative detail; the positioning of the reader through the authorial viewpoint (omniscient or first person?) and so on.
  • Write a film script, or pages from a film script, either continuing, supplying back-story or alternative endings to, one of the films in the pack.
  • Write a funny scene in a film – not as easy as it sounds, along the lines of Jus' Gaps.
  • Imaginary interviews with characters from films, or the actors that play them (for example, Tameka Empson in Jus' Gaps, Ashley Thewlis in About a Girl, or George in The Little Things) for magazines aimed at particular audiences can approach characterisation by a different route.
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Tameka Empson went on to 3 Non-Blondes fame after Jus' Gaps

In creating questions, responses, descriptions of settings, and the background information that might be contained in a magazine interview, students begin to access the higher levels for this kind of activity.

  • Shift genres.

Films can be used to help more able writers to understand the conventions of different genres. They may take a character on a narrative journey through different genre styles, starting the day in a Western and finishing in a musical. Similarly, converting a narrative from one genre to another - a romantic comedy, for example, into Gothic horror - again exercises students' appreciation of genre and their creative ingenuity. A possibility here would be to reduce 7.35 in the Morning to one genre only, or take another film and make it a hybrid - The Little Things as comedy, Accident as silent film, About a Girl as romance; The First Time it Hits as horror; The Most Beautiful Man in the World as Western; Two Cars, One Night as thriller; Jus' Gaps as musical; Killing Time at Home as science fiction; TheMan with the Beautiful Eyes as an action film.

  • Similar to the above, and perhaps offering the same challenge while being slightly more approachable for some students, is to re-script scenes from one of the films using dialogue from a Shakespeare play. This would have the effect of updating the bard, but in a well-defined context, and focusing on the language. Examples could be to rewrite parts of The Little Things as Hamlet, Two Cars, One Night as Romeo and Juliet.

Inform, explain, describe

  • Write an article entitled 'How to Make a Short Film for Teenagers' for a teenage magazine. The genre and audience can be altered to suit the needs of the particular group or scheme of work, but essentially this kind of task enables students to write informatively about a relatively factual topic. Students would have the opportunity, having watched four or five of the films on the compilation, to reduce the genre to a list of ingredients.
  • In role as a classifier from the British Board of Film Classification, write to a film-maker explaining what changes need to be made to a particular film in order to make it suitable for a younger audience, for example 7.35 in the Morning, About a Girl, Accident. Suitably tackled, this kind of task can cover the full spectrum of this writing triplet.
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About a Girl

  • Similar to the above, and adopting a suitable role, write to inform an editor which cuts to make to a film in order to make it both shorter and more suitable for broadcasting on terrestrial television before the nine o'clock watershed.
  • Write a transcription of an interview between a journalist and an actor which explains why the actor chose to perform a role in a particular way. Alternatively, the interview might focus on a director's intentions behind a specific film or scene.
  • Describe a series of locations suitable for a filmed adaptation of a particular book or for a particular genre of film. Specifying the identity of the writer (location scout, director, interested member of the public); the audience (judge of magazine competition, film producer, cinematographer); and the form (letter, report, magazine article) may help to strengthen the writing by giving a greater sense of purpose to the task.
  • Write a set of promotional materials as might be found in a press pack relating to a particular film. Such materials might include a description of the film, information about the cast and production team, a transcription of an interview with the film-maker explaining the reasons for making the film and so on. Some of the films in the compilation are supported by press packs: see the Film menu on the left.
  • Write an article for a school or college website informing of future, or describing past, screenings at a school- or college-based film club. Students could construct a programme comprising the shorts on the compilation, and compile notes, synopses, advice on suitability, using stills to illustrate the films. Brochures from a local specialist cinema would help with modelling this.
  • Write to explain why you admire the work of a particular director, or actor, or why you like a specific film. Similarly, write to recommend a film that has been seen recently, explaining why it was good.

Argue, persuade, advise

  • Write a 'for' or 'against' speech relating to a controversial issue emerging from the study of a film. The issue might arise from a film's theme; or might be connected to the medium itself - perhaps concerning issues of representation, violence or ideology - which could be linked with requirements of a Media Studies specification. For example, after watching About a Girl, students could construct an argument about the effective prevention of teenage pregnancy; or argue for or against the liberalisation of the PG or 12A classification (Should young teenagers be allowed to see this film despite its harsh visuals?).
  • Prepare a presentation which pitches an idea for a film to a group of studio executives. The presentation can include PowerPoint slides, sample script pages and other handouts, each necessitating subtle adjustments of style according to audience and purpose. The script and related written documents could form part of a written coursework unit and the presentation itself might be marked for oral assessment. Depending on the students, you could allocate more or less challenging films in the compilation to 'sell' to hypothetical financiers.
  • Write a letter to the chair of the school governors arguing for the inclusion of Film Studies in the curriculum. This encourages students to reflect on their own learning. Encourage them to use examples taken from films in the compilation, thereby showing their understanding of these as well as a more general grasp of the place of film in learning.
  • Similar to the above, design a leaflet to be distributing to students and/or parents persuading them to take up Media Studies GCSE as an option in Key Stage 4. Alternatively, students might be asked to write a letter to the QCA recommending the inclusion of more film material in the study of English. Again, students would need to refer to films they had studied to support their arguments.
  • In role as different characters from a film, write a set of letters for a problem page of a teenage magazine. Then in role as the agony aunt or uncle write the responses, offering advice. For example, after watching About a Girl students could write a letter from/to a pregnant teenager (for example, for the problem page of a teenage girls' magazine). What would the boys write to the local newspaper on learning that the house of the man with the beautiful eyes had been destroyed, especially since they believe they know the culprits and the motivation?
  • Design an advertisement promoting a particular film that has been studied. This task draws on students' awareness of persuasive techniques and devices, and can be part of coursework suitable for Media Studies. To make it acceptable as English coursework it would need detailed written commentary alongside it. It could also serve as preparation for the terminal exam.
  • Discuss the merits of the film adaptation of the poem ' The Man with the Beautiful Eyes' and explore issues over the differences between film and print.
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The Man with the Beautiful Eyes

  • In role as a director of a film that has been studied, write an article for a magazine aimed at potential young film-makers, advising them how to make a successful short film. Refer to the interviews with directors available with several of the films in this compilation for background detail.
  • Arrange a sequence of film stills as a storyboard for an advertisement and write the script for a voice-over. The advert might be a trailer for the film itself. Alternatively students could re-appropriate the images and transform them into an advert for a product or service. Using image capture software, stills from any of the films in this compilation could form the basis for this work. Students learn a lot about the polysemic nature of images by using the same images for different purposes, altering their meanings by re-sequencing them and adding captions.
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7.35 in the Morning

Could images from 7.35 in the Morning, for example, be used to sell confetti, mobile phones or coffee?

Analyse, review and comment

  • Write a film review or series of reviews of the same film for different magazines. Some of the films lend themselves to this second task in particularly interesting ways. The Most Beautiful Man in the World, for example, is likely to mean different things to different students and such ambivalence or plurality of views might be reflected in film reviews for different audiences. Depending on the magazine or newspaper, students could highlight the predatory male dimension, or the idea of the man more as a social outcast.
  • Write an essay analysing representations of gender, young people, old people and so on in a series of short films or extracts. For example, after watching Accident students could discuss whether and/or why the different ethnicities and professionals are represented in stereotypical ways.
  • Analyse, review and comment on the differences between a film and a printed treatment of a story. The extra materials for each film include synopses, enabling structured comparative work between the basic story and film treatment.
  • Analyse the opening, end credits, or other suitable sequence of a film in close detail, discussing the effects on the audience of particular choices of shots, sounds and so on. The First Time It Hits, for example, includes a wide variety of shot types, changes in the pace of editing and montage effects.
  • Analyse how a film is aimed at a particular audience, for example children, teenagers, men or women. Films from this compilation make this a challenging task because many do not seem to be aimed at readily evident, classifiable audiences. Who would be the target audience of The Man with the Beautiful Eyes, or Accident?
  • Analyse treatments of the same theme in different films. Compare two films, such as About a Girl and The Little Things, examining how they address issues facing teenagers growing up in a hostile environment. Compare Two Cars, One Night, The Man with the Beautiful Eyes and The Most Beautiful Man in the World in their treatment of childhood.
  • Design a trailer, or a poster, for a film, and comment on the ideas behind it. As a starting point, analyse the 7.35 in the Morning publicity posters and their message.

7.35 in the Morning publicity posters (PDF, 619kb)

The brevity of the films in this compilation enables students to get to know them in detail, making it easier to select particular sections or stills for trailers and posters. Additionally, many of the films defy easy categorisation, and therefore challenge the students to present the films in persuasive but not misleading ways. The commentary that attends this work roots the writing firmly in this particular triplet.

  • Take a still image from a film and annotate it for a less experienced reader of film texts. A number of still images included in the pack are suitable for this activity. The constraint of the less experienced reader can force students to provide extra detail and to think more carefully about the need for clarity of expression.
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Last Updated: 22 Mar 2010