Good sites for Teaching Film

There are some wonderful image manipulation tools for teaching film and fostering student engagement and developing interpretive skills.

One of the easiest to use if Glogster.

http://www.glogster.com/

 It is a web application that enables students to create really dramatic multimedia online posters or glogs as they are called. These can be used to pinpoint certain filmic elements such as key scenes, characterisation, thematic focus and so on. They can also be embedded into blogs and wikis.

If you have taken one of my earlier tips and explored the potential of Weebly Education within the classroom, students love making their own affiliated websites really rich in content and presentation. 

There are some really brilliant student projects using Glogster from a New Zealand school that was studying 'Schindler's List'.

http://ncowie.edu.glogster.com/glog-675/

N. Cowie does some wonderful things with her students and the work that her class has done with 'Glogster' gives other students a lot of inspiration for what they can do with any particular film being studied.


The other thing about Glogster is that I have found that students of all ages, junior and senior, love being able to use images, audio and YouTube video clips. it is a good homework or revision task and because it is so creative in design, it really encourages collaborative effort as well as individual projects. They can be used for speeches, discussion, creative writing responses and a host of other classroom tasks limited only by your own imagination.

For information about film techniques, one of the most comprehensive sites is the following:

http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/index.htm

Audio and visual digital explanations are given but because it is so extensive and detailed, it is probably best suited for senior film study. 

Followup Activity:

Once students are familiar with the techniques used within films, a fun activity is to allow them to choose from a selection of possible films, examples that demonstrate the various camera shots and angles as well as lighting methods. To get the most out of this activity they would obviously have to indicate the purpose, effect or impact of the shot. This can be done as a simple ppt, photoshop or animoto project. I will give an example from a powerpoint I made for 'Corpse Bride'.

1. Extreme Wide Shot
2. Mid Shot
3. Medium Close up
4. Close up
5. Extreme Close up
6. Low Angle
7. High Angle
8. Dutch Tilt
9. Point of View Shot
10. Cut away
11. Shallow Focus
12. Deep Focus

Extreme Close-up - used to create empathy with protagonist