Archive for the 'lesson plans' Category
Simple Guide to Analysis
Most media (and other subject) teachers despair of students ever understanding the difference between denotation and connotation, or between signifier and signified. Most students are just so bottled up and blinkered that they can’t make connections. I’ve been accused in the past of making connections too easily, one of the benefits of a paranoid style, [...]
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Tags: analysis, examinations, exams
Juno vs. Wade
Went to see Juno last night, one of three films released this week given five-star reviews by such outlets as the Guardian. Even Kermode was mostly positive about it.
I enjoyed the film. Ellen Page is a star, and the one-liners in the script were funny. Interesting question in my mind as to audience, given the [...]
Filed under: Culture, Education, Entertainment, Family, Movies, Nostalgia, Perception, acting, arts, film, lesson plans, media studies, presentations, teaching and learning | 4 Comments
Tags: Juno
Serenity – Shot by Shot
For ‘A’ level media, it’s a requirement that under the “film and broadcast fiction” module, we study contemporary examples. Contemporary is defined by the exam board as having been released in the 5 years prior to the beginning of the course.
This is a little bit of a challenge to me, as I haven’t actually paid [...]
Filed under: Culture, Education, Entertainment, Movies, SF, film, lesson plans, media studies, sci-fi, science fiction, teaching and learning | 1 Comment
Tags: westerns samurai
Values and Ideology
Quite the hardest aspect of A Level Media, as far as my students seem to be concerned, is the key concept of values and ideology. They find this difficult, I truly believe, because they have been raised to believe that there is no such thing as ideology, that the world is fully transparent and that [...]
Filed under: Conspiracy Theories, Education, Entertainment, Perception, anxiety, being chippy, happiness, lesson plans, media studies, omens and portents, paranoia, presentations | 5 Comments
Tired, tired, tired
Someone arrived here today searching on “how to survive your NQT year”, which is what I am trying to do. My method so far involves not doing much planning, so that all my weekend time isn’t spent working. I’m doing a bit – adapting last year’s – roughly working out what I’m going to do, [...]
Filed under: Climate, Conspiracy Theories, Education, Recipes, anxiety, climate change, lesson plans, marketing, media studies, omens and portents, presentations, teaching and learning | 2 Comments
Tags: NQT, NQT year
She’s Having a Baby
I wanted to remind my students about the use of musical montage sequences – and especially how the lyrics of the song chosen can be matched to shots in order to tell the story. I’m trying to emphasise, as they make their films, that they need to use visual storytelling and not too much dialogue.
I [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Character, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Family, Movies, Music, Songs, acting, ambitions in life, anxiety, arts, film, lesson plans, media studies, presentations, teaching and learning | 1 Comment
Tags: John Hughes, Kate Bush, Kevin Bacon, She's Having a Baby, Signs
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Predictably, I’m finding sixth form teaching very rewarding. This is kind of inevitable, because it’s the nearest thing you get, as a secondary school teacher, to engaging with students who are (a) as interested as you are in the subject and (b) have volunteered to be there and (c) are quite bright.
So I get five [...]
Filed under: Arrested Development, Character, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Middle Age, Movies, Nostalgia, ambitions in life, anxiety, arts, autobiography, film, lesson plans, media studies, teaching and learning | 1 Comment
Further to my ever-popular post on 10 Things I Hate About You, here is the long-overdue slideshow companion.
This focuses on the technical brilliance of the opening sequence, with its extended opening crane shot (an homage to Orson Welles, perhaps), and lengthy and complex steadicam shots, all of which pack 10lbs of storytelling into a 1lb [...]
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Audience
Media Studies at GCSE has four key concepts: media language (how meaning is constructed using a system of codes, techniques, and conventions); institutions (those who produce and regulate the media); audiences (the spectators and how they are identified/constructed); and representation (how reality is portrayed in the media, and how different social groups and individuals are [...]
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Further to this, here’s a slideshow. Main focus is on image composition and the use of angles in positioning the audience.
Filed under: 1960s, Culture, Education, Movies, Perception, acting, film, lesson plans, media studies, presentations | 4 Comments
