Teaching Grammar

Some questions you might like to ask your class to provoke a response to the opening scenes- What did you see? What did you hear? Where and when is this film set? How do you know? What do you know about this period? Who are the main characters? How do you know? What is this film going to be about ? How do you know? What do the titles and theme music contribute to our understanding of the text?

Try showing a key scene, perhaps one suggested by students, and calling the shots or the editing or the lighting for them. Ask them to do the same for the next key scene. My students always end up laughing that for me every scene is a key scene! Show a scene with the sound turned off. Ask students to listen to the same scene with their eyes closed. Get students to identify films where the same techniques have been used, is this a function of genre, time, culture, style, homage or rip off? Ask them to identify how they used this prior experience to understand the narrative of the film being studied. Spend a whole lesson on visual imagery. Spend a whole lesson on symbolism- visual, character, story, sound. In films like Blade Runner it is possible to find all four in one short scene. Ask students to consider the differences between novel, story, plot and script.

I like to ask students to set some tasks to be undertaken during a second viewing. Perhaps they might like to divide these tasks amongst the class and pool the information gathered later. You can always seed the things you want them to identify as part of the discussion. Students should view the film a second time, viewing conditions are not so critical at this time. Discussion after the second viewing should be much deeper, it is great to see the lights go on during this discussion. Again, a viewing diary is a good idea.