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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.
Basic Teaching techniques (PDF)
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.
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 (Macs only).
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: Give students randomly chosen shots from a film and ask them to place them in order. The sequence doesn't have to match the sequence in the film, and varying the 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 shelves filled with nail varnish bottles in I Love My Nails) or from key moments in the film. Ask them to suggest what the film is about.
- Annotating: Analyse shot size or composition, or interpret, for example, the close-up of Tana as a girl in Silence by adding thought bubbles.
- Specific focus: on a setting (the shots of the bush in Bush Bikes) or a character (Giancarlo in Hidden).
- As dramatic backdrop for re-enacting scenes (This is easier with a ceiling mounted projector.)
Digitising and repurposing film
Film-makers have given permission for the films in the compilation to be digitised and repurposed, as follows:
School-use repurposing rights
Where indicated, on the relevant film pages, you have the right to edit, manipulate, repurpose, dub and mix film sequences 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, Routledge, 1995.) 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 MovieMaker come free with AppleiMacs 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 be 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 a soundtrack, students could watch 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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