European Medi@Culture-Online http://www.european-mediaculture.org

Author: British Film Institute (bfi), .

Title: Moving Images in the Classroom. A Secondary teachers’ guide to using Film and Television.

Source: http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/resources/teaching/secondary/miic/pdf/mic_all.pdf [15.06.2004]

Published with kind permission of the publisher.



British Film Institute (bfi)

Moving Images in the Classroom

A Secondary teachers’ guide to using Film and Television

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed in different ways to Moving Images in the Classroom and the editorial team are extremely grateful to them all. In particular we would like to mention the following:

Those attending a bfi seminar in December 1999, chaired by Professor Dylan Wiliam of King’s College, London:

Sally Blackwell (Dartmoor Community College, Devon), Geoff Dean (English Adviser, Buckinghamshire), Tony Knight (QCA), John Hertrich (Ofsted), Paul Higgins (National Literacy Strategy), Martin Hollins (QCA), Roland Howard (Gillott’s School, Henley-on-Thames), Barbara Jones (QCA), Chris Maynard (QCA), Jane McCarthy (bfi), Sarah Mumford (National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford), Martin Phillips (English and Media Adviser, Devon), Margaret Talboys (QCA) and Mike Weller (English, Drama and Media Adviser, Sussex).

The subject grid contributors:

Martin Hollins (Science), Chris Durbin (Geography), Ian Williams (Design and Technology), Professor Brian Hill (Modern Foreign Languages), Tony Carroll (Art and Design), Kevin Hayter (Music) and Gill Pooley (Citizenship).

Subject Officers at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority who commented in detail on the subject grids:

Jerome Freeman (History), Barbara Jones (Geography), Tony Knight (Music), Chris Maynard (Modern Foreign Languages), Margaret Talboys (Art), John Keest (Citizenship/PHSE).

Production credits

Louise Spraggon (bfi).

Andrew Burn, David Parker, Tom Barrance.

Cary Bazalgette (bfi), Wendy Earle (bfi), Jenny Grahame (English and Media Centre), Jill Poppy (Film Education), Mark Reid (bfi) and Alastair West (QCA).

While the editorial team has tried to ensure that Moving Images in the Classroom will be relevant to teachers across the UK, this first edition relates more closely to the National Curriculum in England than to the curricula in the other three nations. We look forward to continuing dialogue with teachers and other colleagues in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to explore the ways in which future editions can be made more relevant to their curricula.

First published in 2000 by the

Copyright © British Film Institute

The British Film Institute offers you opportunities to experience, enjoy and discover more about the world of film and television.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

    Chapter 1 · Basic teaching techniques

    Chapter 2 · Moving images across the curriculum

Introduction

Why moving images matter

The moving image is a shared and vital global language. Educators are aware of the power of the moving image, whether delivered through cinemas, broadcast, video or online; but throughout the 20th century attitudes differed towards its place in schools. This guide is intended to help build a secure place for the moving image in 21st century education. Critical understanding of film, video and television is becoming an integral part of literacy, and the spread of digital technologies means that the ability to make and manipulate moving images will become an ever more important skill. Moving images are also important in their own right as a valuable part of our culture. Pupils need access to the history and worldwide range of the moving image’s achievements in order to recognise what moving images can do, and to encourage their creative ambitions.

Education professionals know that the lives of young people are informed and animated by the moving image. From early childhood, we live in a world saturated by audio-visual texts. Children spend more time with moving images than they do with school work, and through this they acquire an enormous amount of knowledge and experience which some teachers are learning to access and develop. These teachers enthusiastically argue that the ability to analyse a moving image text sharpens pupils’ responses to literature and can increase their reading and writing skills. Film and television versions of literary texts or historical events entice further reading and study. In schools which encourage creative moving image work, teachers in many subject areas, including Mathematics, Geography and Science, have seen its value. Pupils can document and communicate their learning in moving images: assembling and selecting evidence, and using digital technology to present an argument or construct a hypothesis. The moving image can often be more appropriate than written texts or still images as a way of presenting ideas or processes, and for some children it offers new ways of succeeding.

Why now?

Some enthusiastic teachers see moving image material as more than just content to be added to the curriculum. They realise that moving image texts have their own complex and unique language which must be understood properly if these media are to be used in schools to their full potential. However, to teach well the analytical and creative skills relating to moving image texts many will need to develop the appropriate expertise in teaching and curriculum planning. Although this will not happen overnight, there are, fortunately, several recent developments that will help in this task.

The, often daunting, technical and financial difficulties of accessing and using moving images in the classroom are beginning to diminish. Substantial UK investment in hardware, software and networks promises not only to deliver moving images to the classroom but also to provide the means of manipulating and exporting them. The costs of both hardware and software are being driven down as the ICT market expands. In addition, a range of governmental and commercial initiatives are being offered to schools to update their equipment and get access to training.

While the full implications of this investment for teaching and learning remain to be seen, the place of moving images in the curriculum has been clarified by the publication in 1999 of Making Movies Matter. This influential report of the Film Education Working Group on the future of moving image education in the UK has been widely discussed. In the same year the Revised National Curriculum for England clarified and increased the prominence of the moving image in the curriculum for 5- to 16- year olds. It is possible that new education policies will be formed in the devolved nations of the UK which will also review the place of the moving image in their curricula. There has never been a better time for schools to develop both critical and creative use of moving image texts.

Which part of the curriculum?

As the communications environment continues to change, there is much debate about the nature and range of the basic skills people will need to participate in the society of the future. There is little doubt that print literacy will remain a key competence, but there is also little doubt that other kinds of competence will grow in importance. The ability to analyse moving images, to talk about how they work, and to imagine their creative potential, drawing upon a wide film and television viewing experience as well as on practical skills, could be termed ‘cineliteracy’. Like competence in print, number or ICT, cineliteracy will increasingly underpin the whole curriculum.

For basic help, start here!

Moving Images in the Classroom is a guide for teachers, departmental subject heads and curriculum managers in secondary schools who want to develop work with moving images. It offers a set of basic techniques, grounded in the realities of today’s classrooms and curricula, which can help any teacher, in any subject area, to use moving images more effectively. These techniques can be used by individual teachers, or they could form the basis of departmental or whole-school policies. Teachers and schools who already teach Media will find much here that is familiar, but the purpose of Moving Images in the Classroom is to reach beyond the Media Studies specialist to other subject teachers, to demonstrate the potential value of cineliteracy to enhance pupils’ performance and broaden their cultural experience.

This guide also offers ways of moving forward where secondary schools want to make a more substantial commitment to moving image education. It includes a new version of the learning progression model, ‘Becoming Cineliterate’, originally published in Making Movies Matter, which can be used as a framework for assessing the development of pupils’ learning over time. This model covers all stages of education. We are already working with primary schools to develop techniques and resources appropriate for younger children, and future editions of Moving Images in the Classroom will reflect this. Moving Images in the Classroom has been written by a team of teachers and advisers convened by the British Film Institute, and produced in association with Film Education and the English and Media Centre. It thus draws upon the expertise of three organisations that have been central to the development of media and moving image teaching in the UK for many years. We are grateful to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, and in particular the subject officers, for their support in the development of this publication.

We invite all users of this guide to contribute to continuing dialogue about the role of the moving image within a wider definition of literacy, so that future editions can take account of developments in classroom practice and teachers’ reflections upon it.

Website: www.bfi.org.uk E-mail: discover@bfi.org.uk

Chapter 1: Basic Teaching Techniques

We all know how frustrating it can be to show a video to pupils and get nothing much back in response apart from ‘it was boring’ or ‘I liked the bit where…’. And what kinds of question can you ask of pupils other than ‘look out for…’? Using video more productively is not just a matter of knowing some technical terms – though these can help. It depends upon recognising that the moving image has a complex and dense language of its own that we have all learned to ‘read’ with such ease while not necessarily being aware of our own skills.

The eight basic techniques described on the following pages are designed to help you unravel the codes and conventions of the moving image, and enable you to use a wider range of film and video texts in the classroom. As you and your pupils unpack the layers of meaning, you will be helping them to develop their general skills as more critical, attentive and knowledgeable readers of the moving image.

The techniques are not age-specific. You could use any of them with any age-group depending on the topic in hand, the moving image text you want to base them on, and how far you want to follow through each activity. But you may feel that Techniques 7 and 8 are inherently more sophisticated and thus more appropriate for Key Stage 4. In each of the nine ‘subject grids’ which follow, you will find some of these techniques explained and illustrated in subject-specific terms which should bring them to life for you as a subject teacher.

The first three techniques concentrate on the language of the moving image. They offer you ways of encouraging pupils to see how everything in a moving image text is saying something, and contributes in some way to its overall meaning. Technique 1, Freeze Frame, concentrates on the visual language of moving images. Technique 2, Sound and Image, helps pupils see how important sound is in the interpretation of moving image texts. Technique 3, Spot the Shots, draws their attention to the editing process. Any of these techniques can be used from time to time in very short sessions to build up pupils’ critical awareness of how moving image texts work, and your confidence in using the technique to develop more critical and thoughtful ways of working with moving images.

The next two techniques, Top and Tail and Attracting Audiences, deal with the ways in which moving image texts are produced and circulated to audiences. Whatever your subject area, it is important to point out to pupils that any moving image text need not necessarily be taken at face value. They should think about where a film or TV programme comes from and whose interests it may be serving, if they are to use its information critically and constructively. Top and Tail in particular is a technique you could use quite quickly and informally whenever you use a video, to establish the habit of checking out a text’s sources.

Techniques 6, 7 and 8, Generic Translations, Cross-media Comparisons and Simulation, offer you more substantial classroom activities to explore ways of making changes to moving image texts and relating them to other media. In subject-specific contexts these can thus form the basis of coursework pieces at Key Stage 4, or could be used to set up class projects to explore an issue or topic.

Each technique is set out across three columns. The first column describes the activity itself and the second column provides some simple questions, which should help you to start the ball rolling in setting work or guiding whole-class discussion. Learning objectives are listed in the third column. These are moving-image specific, but if you accept our argument that ‘cineliteracy’ supports any subject, then you should find these useful insights that will contribute to communication and understanding in your subject area.

We have avoided media jargon as much as possible, but the techniques necessarily introduce some simple and useful technical terms, which are explained in the Glossary at the end of this book. To use the techniques you will need, at minimum, a VCR with a good ‘pause’ facility that enables you to view single frames. A ‘frame advance’ feature would also be useful. Some of the follow-up activities also require ICT software that can handle moving image material; there is more detail on this in Chapter 4 – Making moving images with digital media. Overall advice on how to manage moving image work can be found in Chapter 5 – Managing teaching and learning about the moving image.

Chapter 2: Moving images across the curriculum

Pupils…should…be taught to use the patterns of language vital to understanding and expression in different subjects. These include the construction of…texts that are often used in a subject (for example, language to express causality, chronology, logic, exploration, hypothesis, comparison, and how to ask questions and develop arguments). The National Curriculum Handbook for secondary teachers in England, DfEE 1999, p40

To use film or television in any subject simply as illustration or motivation is never enough. It misses out on the ‘patterns of language’ with which moving images communicate information, ideas and values.

A 1990s science documentary about the discovery of DNA and a contemporary news item on the same topic will both be valuable as sources of understanding about the impact of that discovery, but they will also differ significantly in style and ideology. Those very differences could also be part of what pupils need to learn about the development of genetics. A television travel programme about Central Asia and an action adventure film set in the same area will both illuminate pupils’ understanding of life, landscape and climate in that region but in very different ways. Pupils will need to understand and describe those generic differences in order to make the kind of comparisons that will enhance their understanding of the subject.

As a subject teacher you can develop pupils’ awareness of the particular and diverse ways in which moving images can show processes, tell stories, present arguments and describe places, as well as the ways in which they can mislead or lie. By doing this you will not only help pupils to interpret film and television more effectively, you will help them to understand the role of the moving image in constructing subject knowledge and, indeed, perceptions of what the subject is. This in turn may inspire pupils to use moving images themselves in presenting their learning to others, whether for assessment or simply in order to consolidate and take ownership of what they have learned. In other words, effective use of moving images can help you teach your subject better.

This section of Moving Images in the Classroom provides subject-specific guidance in the form of ideas and techniques for working with moving images in nine different curriculum subjects: English, Science, Design and Technology, History, Geography, Modern Foreign Languages, Art and Design, Music and Citizenship/PHSE.

For each subject we have provided two grids. The first presents a rationale for including moving image related activity in your subject area. Learning objectives that situate moving images within the subject are mapped against types of activity and the kinds of outcome that pupils might be expected to produce. We have stressed non-written outcomes, including multimedia presentations, performance, and video production. Although these still present a challenge to the resources and budgets of some schools, increasing numbers are looking to these options and for some this section may help you make the case within your school or department for resources and training that will support this kind of work.

The second grid for each subject selects some of the basic techniques described in Chapter 1, but this time sets them within the subject specialism. The exemplar activities and tasks are intended not only to develop subject-specific learning but also to enhance pupils’ effective use of moving image media within that subject. Not all the basic techniques are used in each grid, but the grids will, we hope, provide you with starting-points to develop your planning.

We have deliberately not specified age-levels against these activities. Most moving image related activities, as described at the level of generality necessary in these grids, can be undertaken at a wide range of age-levels and can be revisited at different stages. Differentiation is achieved through the type of text selected for the activity, the topic or subject matter to be studied, and teacher expectations of the level of analytical skill, viewing experience and independence of thought that pupils may bring to the task. Generally speaking, each grid progresses from relatively simple analytic tasks using techniques like freeze-frame, to more sophisticated activities which may be more suitable for older pupils.

Working with moving images in ENGLISH

Using the basic teaching techniques in ENGLISH

Working with moving images in SCIENCE

Using the basic teaching techniques in SCIENCE

Working with moving images in DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Using the basic teaching techniques in DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Working with moving images in HISTORY

Using the basic teaching techniques in HISTORY

Working with moving images in GEOGRAPHY

Using the basic teaching techniques in GEOGRAPHY

Working with moving images in MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Using the basic teaching techniques in MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Working with moving images in ART AND DESIGN

Using the basic teaching techniques in ART AND DESIGN

Working with moving images in MUSIC

Using the basic teaching techniques in MUSIC

Working with moving images in CITIZENSHIP/PSHE

Using the basic teaching techniques in CITIZENSHIP/PSHE

Chapter 3: Using moving images in the classroom. Arguments for and experiences of teaching with moving images

Creativity with moving images

Andrew Burn (Parkside Community College, Cambridge)

Creative work with moving images can take many forms: a group of Bengali teenagers making a film with a professional film-maker about their lives, pleasures, culture and identities; the primary school children animating Red Riding Hood, complete with a rich knowledge of this textual tradition and a range of cartoon-like visual styles; 14-year-olds making trailers for The Matrix; two boys making a witty documentary about their visit to a press screening of Gladiator, with throwaway remarks about Ridley Scott’s filmography, and an interview with the cinema manager about distribution. What is really going on when children undertake these kinds of creative work?

Creativity is an aesthetic human activity. It provokes emotional responses, or those emotional responses peculiar to engagement with fictions – what the American philosopher of film, Noel Carroll, calls ‘art-emotion’. This isn’t enough, though – unlike Carroll, I would always want to see this kind of aesthetic engagement in social terms: kids make film for themselves, collaboratively with others, for known and unknown but predicted audiences, expressing social understandings, and socially-formulated aesthetic tastes and preferences. When they choose a dissolve rather than a wipe as a transition between two clips in their film, this is an aesthetic preference within a set of generic conventions and tastes that are inseparable from their social and historical contexts.

Creativity is linked with identity. In a sense, every film made by a child is not so much an expression of their identity as a creative attempt to transform it in some way. We could call this a kind of enunciation: the child is saying, ‘this is how I see the world’. Or it can be a polemic, as in a short documentary on Clause 28 made by some pupils at Parkside recently. It can be an even more direct reworking of the stuff of identity – one’s own image, reworked through the infinite plasticity of sound and image in a digital environment. I watched one of my Year 10 pupils, not confident with much of school, editing a basketball sequence for a sports TV programme for our local cable channel. It featured him as the star player; and his work on his own image, using the grammar of black and white, slow motion, voice-over and a hip hop soundtrack, seemed to me nothing less than a piece of intensely pleasurable creative self-transformation.

Creativity, in moving image work, is caught between the individual and the collaborative. It is inevitably social, but it is easy to get caught in a kind of oscillation between an individually authorial kind of creativity, and different kinds of collaboration. The gap between children good at ICT and those less good at it (often linked to possession of home computers) exacerbates this problem. Many young people who are already excited by the moving image use the digital control offered by the new technologies to enhance their skills at a tremendous rate.

We shouldn’t allow this ability to become naturalised or mystified, like some digital throwback to post-Romantic notions of artistic genius. Most of the elements involved – ICT competence, visual design, the grammar of the moving image, a familiarity with the conventions of a range of film and TV genres – are easily identifiable and teachable, at least in principle. There may or may not be an artistic/creative ability beyond these elements; it’s not particularly helpful to assume there is. On the other hand, a good deal of the creative work we do is more collaborative – two pupils at a workstation, one with the mouse, one using keyboard commands, both pointing excitedly at the screen, their discourse of editorial decision overlapping and fusing. Or the primary school children sharing images on a common network space, making their animations in pairs, but dependent on the sequence that comes before and after their own.

Following the DCMS/DfEE report, All Our Futures, creativity has become a fashionable new buzzword in education circles. Policymakers must recognise that teachers need a great deal of dialogue and reflection on their practice before we are confident about what we mean by it and how it can be fostered. Practical work with moving images is an interesting and rewarding way of doing this. One thing we can do is continue to explore the analogy between language and the moving image: both are ‘semiotic practices’ – ways of communicating which can be analysed and taught. They are also both creative in the widest sense, the stuff out of which social identities and participation are made.

Cut-out and jointed figures and semi-opaque backgrounds are used with extraordinary fluidity in Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1923-26).Courtesy: bfi Stills

But maybe this language model has the disadvantage of restricting us to pedagogic traditions of the English classroom. Another obvious source of experience in working with moving images is Media Studies, but its space for creativity has always been ambivalent. Since most exam syllabuses in Media are still rooted in the teaching of interpretive frameworks and critiques of the mass media, the idea of creativity in media production is often buried beneath syllabus imperatives to teach about media forms, representations, audiences, institutions. The idea that a creative practice can justify itself, a familiar idea in the pedagogies of Art and Music, is really absent from Media Studies syllabuses and assessment practices.

We need to recover the wider view that recognises the importance of creativity and pleasure in the making of moving image texts. This must mean looking at the creative practices of the other arts subjects: the visual and textual narratives of Drama, on which, of course, most moving image texts encountered by our students are based; the compositional practices of Music; a time-based medium like film; the visual grammar of Art; the more condensed movement sequences of Dance.

Keeping the creative potential of Media and ICT teaching in the frame, alongside the literacy teaching of English, we need to plunder the pedagogies of the other arts until we find patterns of teaching and learning in which the making of moving image texts can offer a set of creative repertoires to our students alongside the kinds of text they can make with paint, body, sound, and digital inscription elsewhere in the curriculum, and elsewhere in life.

Moving images in Music

K. R. Hayter (Robertsbridge Community College, East Sussex)

Because of film set noise, most dialogue and sound effects in live action films are re-dubbed in the recording studio after filming. Animation has no production sound so all sounds are created from scratch. The process of adding the sounds of footsteps, body movements and props is called Foley. This classroom activity consists of creating and performing – and perhaps recording – a Foley score for a film or animation extract. It is suitable for all ages from 8 to 16 and upwards: there is plenty of scope here to differentiate the work to suit all abilities and ages.

The exercise must be based on a suitable short clip from a live action or animated film. In order to make this account explicit and precise, I am basing it on The Angel and the Soldier Boy by Alison De Vere, with music by Clannad (BMG video 790329). This superb 25 minute video demonstrates perfectly how music and sound can be synchronised precisely with the action. The 62-second clip I would select is 13 minutes into the film: a scene beginning with a drunken pirate captain who climbs into his bunk and falls asleep. The Angel and the Soldier then borrow his keys, open the treasure chest and retrieve a stolen coin.

Undertaking this work shows pupils how powerful sound can be as a component of meaning, and extends their skills and ingenuity in creating credible effects from unlikely sources. It will also develop co-ordination between eye, ear and hand (and brain!).

Foley Score (Running Order)

Moving images in Art

Tony Carroll (Boundstone Community College, West Sussex)

The two portrayals below are dramatised accounts from two teaching episodes. The first is based on current work in the school where I have been teaching for one year; the second is based on memories and pupils’ work from a few years ago in my last school, where media in Art was already established. The names of pupils have been changed to hide their identities.

I showed my Year 9 group a short film called The Sandman (Media in Art pack, bfi 1996). The aim was to search for understandings in the film’s language by responding to different elements such as lighting, characters, colours, sounds, camera angles, and moods. After watching the film there was a strange hush and I wasn’t sure of the pupils’ reactions to it. I left this pregnant pause and went just to the right of the TV to the security of my whiteboard, where I began writing down some of the headings. The pupils’ then started citing examples faster than I could write them down. ‘There were shadows on the wall’ one shouted, ‘and on the door handle’, said another. One pupil remembered that a shadow appeared on the boy’s face as he lay in bed. When he woke it turned out to be his mother, not the evil Sandman as the music led us to believe.

These pupils told me that in this film blue was used around the staircase and in the bedroom because it was cold and scary. I asked them if blue was always used in this way in adverts or films they watched. They said no, because blue sometimes means fresh, bright and clean, as in toothpaste commercials (and I remembered the blue-white of a washing powder ad). So I asked, ‘What did red symbolise in The Sandman, or orange-brown?’ ‘Red was for blood’ they all called out, ‘when the Sandman pulled out the boy’s eyes.’ ‘Did you actually see it?’ I asked. ‘No’, said Hayley, ‘it was shot on the walls in shadows.’ ‘Ah’, I said, ‘then it needs to go under the “Shadows” heading as well as the “Colours” one. …Where did we see orange-brown?’ ‘In the living room,’ came the reply.

I then wanted to know what they thought these colours were used for, what they symbolised. Jon reminded us about red, and a few shouted about the blue being cold, before Mark advanced the idea that the living room was warm but the bedroom was cold. Then we realised that the little boy felt safer in the warmth of the living room but more vulnerable in the stairway and bedroom. The mood created by the music and sound effects helped. Pupils referred to the ticking clock and the boy banging his toy drum in the living room. As soon as he went up the long twisted staircase the mood changes by use of musical sound, high pitched notes of a piano and chilling violins, and the non-music sounds like the creaking stairs.

Through this activity the pupils initially made an illustrated spider diagram to extend their design skills and show off their knowledge of the language of this film. Later we made connections to German Expressionist prints to look at the influences on the film’s design, such as the distorted bed, clock, door and window. This link helped to place The Sandman in the tradition of grotesque tales.

I am currently teaching this group to make a video cover for the film. Considerations of the symbolic importance of colours and shadows are being highlighted as part of the design process where an audience is implied. This is my first year in the school, and in time I would like to be able to set up facilities where video and multimedia work could be carried out.

A few years ago at my last school, low budget video equipment was available after a commitment was shown by the school to support the development of media in Art. I remember a Year 8 class using two video cameras in the art room to record different types of shot from a still life group. I noticed how they worked as a team. Hannah who always used to complain about not being able to draw suddenly became the team leader and I pictured her in a drama lesson where her real talents could come to the fore. In my Art lessons where drawing took place other pupils shone, but with group work activities pupils such as Hannah could shine too. The group made quick decisions to shoot the still life from above, below and from different ‘square on’ positions. They sometimes zoomed in so close that the object could not be easily recognised. In the editing room later we talked about the rhythms that could be created by the speed of cutting from one shot to another. Martin made a sequence of photographic stills using the same kind of principle about camera position and angle to suggest abstract movement. We then watched Digital Still Life by Malcolm le Grice (Media in Art pack), and the pupils began to see how someone made art, using ideas about time and visual ‘music’ to organise their images.

(Tony Carroll Media in Art Book and Video pack, bfi 1996)

Moving images in Geography

Chris Durbin (County Inspector for Geography, Staffordshire LEA)

Why is the moving image so important in Geography?

Teachers believe that moving images:

However, many teachers do make full use of the visual dimension of moving images. In a revealing experiment (Roberts 1987), groups of student teachers were asked to take notes from a video about Brazil. The transcript of the commentary was read back to them after this note taking exercise. The student teachers were asked to cross out any sentences, phrases that were from the commentary. The majority had no notes left. In other words the act of note taking had for the most part become an auditory and not a visual experience; most of the images were not transferred into words. A single viewing and note taking process allows no time to dwell on the images, and words to express the sense of place are much more easily gleaned from the ‘expert’ commentator.

Learning objectives for the use of video can be made more explicit by deploying a variety of ‘watch’ and ‘do’ exercises, depending on which of the above objectives is central. By ‘do’, it might be watch and think, write, discuss or even draw. This approach allows the teacher to focus the watching and then give the pupils time to think and respond. The basic techniques offered in Chapter 1 can help you do this.

Why should Geography teachers teach media?

Firstly, it is important for both teachers and pupils to know what their ‘geographical imagination’ is and where it comes from. Secondly, globalisation is a now a fundamental and pervasive cultural process. Thirdly, moving image media exert a great influence on our perceptions of places. Television programmes and films, whether documentary or drama, create a condensed and often exaggerated perception of place. For example David Attenborough, crawling through the canopy of the rainforest, ‘bottles’ the scene using very good ecological researchers and very skilled camera operators, and then edits hundreds of hours of filming into a 30-50 minute documentary, which almost always excludes encounters with the actual people who live there.

Perceptions matter: they influence individual and collective decisions.

People have perceptions of the world they live in which affect the decisions they make. They choose to live, shop or spend a weekend in a certain place because of the way they perceive it. The driving force behind economic migration is the perception that other places are better, but for new economic migrants the reality is often disappointing.

Moving image media help to create the ‘geographical imagination’.

Perceptions of places have been called the ‘geographical imagination’ (Massey 1994) and this varies from person to person, social group to social group, culture to culture. In any one person, this geographical imagination depends as much on personal attitudes and values as well as on the reality of the place itself. Culture plays an important part in determining this imagination, as do the values and attitudes of family and friends. But most people experience a limited range of places even today with modern travel and therefore visual media influence their ‘geographical imagination’. Advertisers of holiday destinations portray a place as tourists wish to perceive it.

Globalisation means more dominance of English language media.

Globalisation has had its impact on perceptions of places too. Young people are brought up with images of places from all over the world. For people in the UK this means moving image texts which are British interpretations of distant places, whether they are serious like programmes by Michael Palin or David Attenborough or less so like programmes such as Caribbean Uncovered or Euro-trash. In the late sixties and seventies, Blue Peter presenters went on their ‘holidays’ once a year. Today young people see global reports from Blue Peter at least once a week. It also means more media from other English speaking countries and our perceptions of the USA are often in much greater detail because of the sheer volume of media from that country.

Like land- and cityscapes, worldviews are shaped.

Learning with moving image media is important to the moral and cultural education of the pupils in schools. When a teacher puts a visual image of a place in front of pupils, their values and attitudes are used to interpret the pictures, sounds and sequences. We have the means as Geography teachers to make pupils aware of this and to develop their own creative and interpretative skills to convey ideas and information about places and people.

(NOTES: Roberts, M. 1987 Using Video Cassettes, Teaching Geography vol. 12 no 3 pp114-117. Massey, Doreen 1994 Space, Place and Gender Polity Press.)

Chapter 4: Making moving images with digital media

As accessible and relatively cheap software for the manipulation and editing of moving images comes on to the market, some schools have started to use it within the curriculum. In this chapter teachers explore the way ICT software can be used to develop the practical and creative side of moving image education.

Production work in a specialist school

Andrew Burn (Parkside Community College, Cambridge)

Parkside Community College in Cambridge is a specialist media college, under the DfEE’s specialist schools programme. Part of our aim is to explore the use in education of the moving image, and of how children both read and respond to moving image texts; and also how they might produce these themselves. We have aimed to explore this across the age range as much as possible; and across the secondary curriculum. For the past three years we have been using a non-linear editing package called Media 100, and a cheap animation package called The Complete Animator.

Media 100

Media 100, which runs on Mac G4s, is a professional digital video editing package. It imports video footage from any source – we use mainly VHS and digital videotape (DV). It will also output to any format – useful for classrooms which are still equipped with VHS players. The package provides the usual kind of video editing screen. There is an edit window, where the edited footage appears in real time, with some real-time effects (dissolves, colour, lighting and contrast changes). Other effects (wipes, slow or fast motion, titles) have to be rendered, which can take up to a minute. There is also a window showing the clips of digitised footage, identified by the first frame of the sequence. The editing is done on a timeline, with a two-track video line, and up to four audio-tracks below it.

Media 100 screen: Year 11 trailer

What we use it for

Student projects using Media 100 have included Media Studies coursework projects (adverts, pop videos, film trailers); documentaries made by pupils (one on coastal erosion on the North Norfolk coast; a number on global and ethical issues); making college anthems (the videos of three rock songs by pupils); making animations combining GCSE music and media work. We have also used it to edit half hour TV programmes we broadcast once a week on local cable TV.

Learning outcomes

We use the package with pupils within a context informed by moving image pedagogies. That is, we have explicitly taught pupils about the forms they are working with, such as the genres, which partly determine how information is communicated, or how narratives are constructed, or the particular effects on audiences invited, by documentary, pop video, and so on.

We have been less clear about how to actually teach the technical procedures of the software. We have tried whole class teaching of the basic structure of the package before they use it; and we have tried small group instruction as they use it. We have been partially successful, not least because of the contribution of highly-skilled technical staff. We need to develop more worksheet based resources, so that pupils can work at their own pace; and more differentiated strategies, partly to address widely differing ICT competences.

Pedagogy

We have aimed to treat the digital editing process as a kind of literacy, though this is not yet very evident in our styles of teaching. We rely too heavily, maybe, on intuitive patterns of learning. These obviously are important, and are one reason why we chose this software – it is intuitively accessible, especially at its most basic level.

Literacy related activity is most obviously to do with processes of redrafting. The technology allows for rapid and easy repositioning of clips on the timeline, trimming and extending clips by grabbing their ends and pulling, and similar editing and positioning of audio clips relative to the video sequences. At their best, pupils deploy wide ranging understandings of how these processes make meaning and affect audiences in moving image texts.

We are aware, however, of the need to make these understandings explicit, to find out who has them and who, perhaps, doesn’t share them to the same degree; to problematise the idea of ‘intuition’, and again, ask who does and who doesn’t have an intuitive grasp of these processes. We can then get a clearer sense of what teaching and learning styles will address this breadth of competence.

Achievements so far

The software has been quite easy to teach, especially with children at home with ICT – and we have found this with pupils across the secondary age range. Pupils have been highly motivated by the ability to produce professional quality video, and the speed of the real time editing. This has included, as we originally hypothesised, a number of underachieving boys in the 14-16 age range. Also, we think the software does introduce a new kind of literacy, or at least a new kind of audio-visual communicative practice, which enlarges the menu of forms of expression we can offer our pupils. This can be added to print literacy, kinaesthetic forms of communication, music, and visual communication through the still image in art and photography.

Problems

The original cost of the package was prohibitive to any but specialist schools with additional funding; however, the cost has now come down steeply, and a single workstation with the Media 100 LE (entry level) software is now about £5000. This, at five times the price of a top end PC, is still a heavy investment for an average sized or small secondary school; but within the reach of a larger school, especially one with a large Media Studies post-16 programme.

Related to the cost, the number of workstations imposes limits on the use of the equipment. One workstation would allow use by small specialist groups – perhaps a GCSE or A level Media Studies group. Production groups of about four would need to use it in rotation. We have gradually acquired five workstations, which allows for more extensive use in different subject areas and with four Media Studies groups in the 14-16 phase.

The hard disk storage space can be a limitation; this is also a cost issue. Within six months, we needed to double the amount of storage space available. We now aim for 18 to 20 Gb per workstation, which give about an hour’s worth of time of edited footage, depending on the resolution and how many digital effects are used.

(Media 100 is produced by Media 100 Inc. www.media100.com)

The Complete Animator

The Complete Animator is an ‘edutainment’ package: a fun animation program for children with cartoon clipart and sounds, a simple toy-like toolkit, and virtual video controls to operate the animation. It works best, we find, if pupils do the drawings for the animation in a separate drawing package – we use the Acorn vector drawing package, !Draw – and then import these into the animation software. There they are stamped, with a click of the mouse, in different positions on each frame to make the animation. Backgrounds can be drawn or scanned and imported to run through the whole movie.

What we use it for

Many contexts have a place for this program: ICT lessons, English (a Macbeth animation made by Y10 pupils can be seen on the Open University’s Moving Words website), Maths, Science. The biggest project we use it for is with four partner primary schools. The schools choose a common story to animate (it’s Red Riding Hood this year), draw backgrounds and storyboards in their schools, then come with their teachers to Parkside to make the animations. The use of the software promotes a wide range of skills – collaborative story and picture-making; media-related design and sequencing skills, and an ability to make multimedia texts which combine image and sound.

Learning outcomes

Specific ‘cineliteracy’ skills are important, and we teach them explicitly – how to choose between a long or wide shot to establish the forest or the Grandmother’s cottage; close-ups on Red Riding Hood’s face, or the wolf’s head in Granny’s nightcap. Also the pace of the narrative, and how animation can control this. There are also many pleasures experienced by pupils – the pleasure of messing about with a familiar text in animated form; of creating the moving image, still quite a rare experience; and of collaborative work. It’s also a pleasure for teachers to watch, for example, a small group of boys, excitedly discovering how they could share their images on a common network space, one boy downloading another’s picture and editing part of it into his own. This kind of positive and structured collaboration by boys is, needless to say, very welcome.

Image of Macbeth from Complete Animator film byYear 10 group

Advantages – and a disadvantage

This package is very cheap – about £100 for one program, a bit more for multiple licences (from Iota software in Cambridge). It’s very easy to learn, and use, even for quite young children. It’s presented as a fun package, very effectively – it’s probably the most used piece of software for leisure purposes on our school network, where it attracts large numbers of boys at lunchtimes. Though it’s limited, we can also use it in conjunction with other software – it exports films as AVI files, which we have converted to QuickTime to edit in Media 100. There’s also a handy piece of software on the Iota site which will convert bits of animation into animated GIFs for websites. Above all, as I’ve said, the pupils find it hugely motivating. The only real drawback is that, as computer animation goes, it’s very simple, and only really offers two layers – foreground and background. At this level, though, that’s all we need.

(Complete Animator is made by Iota Software. www.iota.co.uk)

Other production software

Backtracks by bfi/Illuminations for C4

David Parker, bfi

This interactive software package aims to explore how visual media work by offering opportunities to edit pre-selected video images alongside a variety of soundtracks and effects. While the interface is extremely user friendly it still offers ample scope for pupils to fully examine the complexity of visual media and to consider why certain juxtapositions of sound and image are powerfully affective. By dragging and dropping sounds and pictures from the palette window into the edit window it is possible to consider how makers of visual media can build our understanding of what is happening and how audiences actively participate in this process.

Backtracks screen

There are a number of user options within this package. Select ‘Freeplay’ and gain access to the full library of clips and soundtracks. Or opt instead for one of the 24 graded activities, where your range of archive material will be narrower and which aim to focus on particular styles of media creativity asking learners, for example, to ‘Make a Trailer’ or ‘Build the Mood’.

Backtracks is not only an excellent resource with which to investigate vital elements of film and television – the media which, arguably, still provide us with most of our entertainment and information – it is also a resource Key Stage 3 and 4 teachers would certainly want to use in order to fully exploit our broadening notions of what it means to be fully literate in the information age.

Backtracks includes teaching notes and a detailed reference section. It runs on Windows 95 (but not later Windows versions) and Mac OS 7.5 systems.

(Backtracks is available from bfi Education)

Kidpix Studio by Broderbund

David Parker (bfi)

This versatile multimedia software uses a number of different tools to allow Key Stage 1 and 2 children to animate, draw, and create sounds and effects either as separate tasks or in any number of combinations. Pupils can make moving image stories using pre-set stamps or by creating original characters and settings using the draw facility.

Pupils’ work can be showcased in a ‘Slide Show’ facility which allows a range of transitional effects to be incorporated – fades, dissolves, split screens etc. Teachers might like to use this software as a way of creating short animated sequences to define or concretise concepts across the curriculum – for example, shape and space in maths. There are a number of pre-set activities designed to reinforce concepts and knowledge across the curriculum which include ‘Maths for Fun’, ‘Make a History Book’ and settings using the draw facility.

Alternatively, Kidpix could be used to explore questions around moving image media and narrative. A recent bfi research project used this software as a vehicle for the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox by a class of Year 3 pupils. Not only did this class gain a valuable insight into the production of an animated short film, they also found extensive overlap with the teaching and learning outlined in the National Literacy Strategy. Using Kidpix certainly made some aspects of language and literacy teaching more accessible to pupils across a wide ability range. Kidpix runs on Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 platforms and comes with a straightforward user reference guide, and is widely available.

Picture Power by the English and Media Centre

Rob James (Primary head teacher)

Picture Power II is a challenging and powerful sound and- image editing program on CD-ROM which enables students to create on-screen storyboards complete with voice and music sound tracks.

The stimulus for the storyboards comes from a series of five image banks, from which students can choose sequences of full colour pictures to build a narrative structure. The themed images include The Bill, Mainline Station, Pursued, Christmas Shopping and The Family. Using a familiar point, drag and drop technique, students can change the order of pictures, crop them to size and alter their duration on-screen. Once the student is satisfied with the storyline, using the same technique, music and sound effects can be added to create and alter atmosphere. To complete the story, a range of transition effects can be added, together with captions and credits. The whole storyboard can then be played back as a slide show. As a bonus, completed work can be printed out for record purposes or off-screen discussion.

It took me less than ten minutes to read the instructions on the cover of the CD-ROM and then master the range of editing techniques. An equally short demonstration enabled my group of Year 6 pupils to be quickly engaged in producing their own storyboard. However, this belies the sophistication of the program, because after mastering the pre-installed sequences, the students can install their own images, music and voice-overs. Up to 64 images can be imported from a scanner, digital camera or clip-art disk and manipulated to create an original sequence.

So Picture Power can be used to develop the literacy skills of narrative sequencing of both image and text and the way music and sound affect mood and atmosphere. It would be particularly motivational for less able students. More able students will understand that the same images, music and text can create entirely different messages and feeling depending on how they are edited. This can lead to discussions about bias and tone.

(Picture Power II is available from NATE, 50 Broadfield Road, Sheffield S8 OXJ and costs £29.95 or £59.95 for a 5-copy network version, plus £4 post and packing. It will run on a Power Mac with OS 7.5 or later, or a Pentium 90Mhz PC with Windows 95.)

iMovie from Apple

Tom Barrance (Media Education, Wales)

iMovie video editing software is pre-installed on Apple iMac DV computers. It uses the high-quality ‘DV’ digital video format. iMovie is exceptionally easy to use: you just plug in a compatible DV, miniDV or Digital 8 camcorder and click on an icon to launch the program.

Buttons on the screen control the camcorder. When you’ve found the clips you want, pressing the ‘Import’ button makes them appear as small pictures in a grid or ‘bin’. Clicking on an image lets you view the clip in a larger window, where you can move through the clip and trim it to length or split it up into sections. You then drag clips into the sequence bar at the bottom of the screen. Here, you can re-arrange them and add sound effects, voiceovers, transitions (like fades and dissolves), music (from CD audio files) and titles or captions. Your film can be exported back to tape or saved in Quicktime format for Web or multimedia.

iMovie’s interface has been kept very simple, which is the source of most of its limitations. You can’t easily insert the image from one clip over the soundtrack of another or edit to the beat of music; editing soundtracks is fiddly; and the on-screen controls for scrubbing through clips and trimming them are too small and easily missed. But these drawbacks are minor when you consider that iMovie is the first program that really allows students in an ordinary classroom to follow a complete film-making process, with revisions and amendments being as easy as they are with word-processing or DTP.

Here are some examples:

iMovie has a huge number of potential applications across the Primary and Secondary curricula, from video diaries to title sequences, news bulletins, advertisements, travelogues, documentaries, adaptations and information films. We used iMovie in its first incarnation, but recently Apple announced iMovie 2, which allows you to split soundtracks, insert one clip over another the soundtrack of another, and lock it to ensure perfect synchronisation. These modifications should make the new version even more useful in the classroom.

One crucial issue however is the camcorder you use with it. Currently, cheaper camcorders (under £1000) have their ‘DV in’ facility disabled to avoid EC import duties. This is the facility that iMovie uses to control the camera and export sequences to tape. But some cameras can be cheaply adapted to re-activate this facility, and you need to make sure that you can do this with the camcorder you intend to use with iMovie. Forthcoming analogue-to-digital converters may allow you to import footage from a non-digital camcorder.

Chapter 5: Managing teaching and learning about the moving image

Strategies for planning, recording and implementing moving image work can be grouped into four areas:

These areas will not all be equally significant for you. Some teachers are developing work with moving image more or less on their own. Sometimes this work is pioneered by one department with little interest from the rest of the school. But in some schools – we hope in increasing numbers – it is possible to address this work across the whole school and in its community context as well.



In the classroom

Viewing film or video needs careful planning and preparation if you are to integrate it successfully with the rest of your teaching and get the most out of it. Your task will be much easier if the department or school can make enough basic investment to ensure that screens in classrooms are positioned so that they do not reflect light from windows or overhead lights, that blackout is installed if necessary, that VCRs have efficient pause and frame advance facilities, and that you are provided with a good remote control so that you can operate the pause, fast forward, rewind or play functions from the back of the room. In your planning you can then concentrate on the following six-point checklist.

In the department

The following checklist of suggestions, drawn from the experiences of departments successfully using moving images, could help you maximise resources and ensure equal access to equipment and materials:

Ideally, each department would have a designated responsibility post for the development of moving image education; a more realistic option is probably to share these seven tasks between departmental staff members, with clearly defined areas of responsibility.

A departmental policy for moving image will be a luxury for most hard-pressed departments but it may be possible to develop basic departmental guidelines about the range and use of subject-related moving image texts, to ensure comparable practice and agreed policy. This can be useful in terms of issues such as the use of fictional material, the classification of texts according to age-group, function or suitability, and appropriate follow-up activities. It is also sensible to institute a personal loan policy, to allow for catching up on missed screenings or to extend the experience of able or enthusiastic pupils. Most significantly, it is a way of establishing principles about why, when, where and how the department as a whole should contribute to the development of pupils’ wider literacy skills. This is of course a whole-school issue, in which your department could lead the way.

Whether or not the moving image aspects of your schemes of work are formally required by your programmes of study, they should be seen as worthy of assessing in their own right if they are to be valued by both students and staff. Record-keeping need not be overly prescriptive or time-consuming, and could take some of the following forms:

In the staffroom

Given that the moving image will be used across the school for a variety of learning purposes and outcomes, it seems particularly important for departments to share ideas, resources and policies. Where schools are able to work together towards a whole school policy, it can be fruitful to consider a cross-curricular initiative similar to the co-ordination of literacy, perhaps even as part of the literacy co-ordinator’s role. The co-ordinator’s brief would be to review departmental curricula and policies, and to take overall responsibility for a unified and integrated approach to moving image use both in and out of the classroom. This could cover extra-curricular activities and issues of interest to parents and to the wider community. Where this is not feasible, the following shorter-term strategies can be considered:

British Transport films of the 1950s promoted the power and beauty of the railways. This is York (J.B.Holmes, 1953) in the video compilation This Sceptred Isle – Yorkshire (British Transport Films 1952-62) available from bfi Video.

In the wider community

Film and television are unique as teaching and learning resources in that their potential impact is as powerful outside the school as inside it: often they are more highly valued in the wider community than in the curriculum. But popular misconceptions about moving image education have been fuelled by previous governments and by the press, so that parents, governors and local media may be prejudiced against it. This can be countered by:



Imagined worlds: the final sequence of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999). Courtesy: Pathe

Chapter 6: Becoming Cineliterate – learning progression. Towards a model of learning progression

Because little consistent and continuing moving image education currently takes place in schools, there is a lack of shared and explicit sense of the standard of work that might be expected at different stages. Anecdotal evidence suggests that similar kinds of moving image activity may be required of pupils at widely differing age levels, with similar results. Teachers’ ideas about appropriate levels of challenge in either critical or creative moving image work tend to be derived from their experience elsewhere in the curriculum rather than from continuing experience of moving image activities with pupils of different ages. This is not surprising, given the general lack of in-service training and advisory support for any kind of media education.

There is therefore a clear need for a model to stimulate thinking about how pupils’ learning might be expected to progress over several years if their moving image education were sustained consistently. Any such model needs to be firmly based in classroom practice and teachers’ own research if it is to have any credibility. But a start has to be made somewhere, which is why we provide here a hypothetical model which some teachers, departments and schools may wish to use as a framework for discussion and reflection.

This model was first published in Making Movies Matter, the report of the Film Education Working Group (bfi 1999). It attempts to show what might be the outcomes of learning about the moving image media of film, video and television (FVT) through five stages of learning progression. These stages can be mapped on to the stages of mandatory and post-16 education, but the model can also be seen as non-age-specific, and all learners would to some extent pass through these stages. It is also a cumulative model: learners in Stage 5 would still be using the same keywords and doing the same kinds of activity that were identified at Stage 1, but in a context of more sophisticated usage and wider viewing experience.

No course content is shown here: this is not a syllabus or a curriculum. For the sake of conciseness and simplicity the model uses quite general terms and is very basic. It is divided into two broad sections at each level:

Experiences and Activities, which provides an indication of the range of inputs learners would need, and Outcomes, which describes what learners should be able to do by the end of the stage. At each stage a list of Key Words is provided, not as a vocabulary to be taught, but as a way of suggesting the areas and types of knowledge that each stage might involve.

The model is based upon three broad conceptual areas, for which a more detailed rationale:

To become a really useful guide to teaching and learning, this model needs critical engagement from practising teachers. This can only happen where individuals and departments are able to invest in the necessary time for reflection and analysis, which of course will depend upon very particular circumstances. The bfi will seek to foster these over the next few years and to encourage others to do the same. Education departments in higher education and in other agencies may wish to use it as the basis for research, curriculum development and teacher training. Some schools – perhaps specialist schools in particular – may be able to undertake valuable developmental work on this model within the classroom, and to share it with others. The bfi is keen to hear about such work and to help disseminate it.

Becoming Cineliterate · Stage 1

Becoming Cineliterate · Stage 2

Becoming Cineliterate · Stage 3

Becoming Cineliterate · Stage 4

Becoming Cineliterate · Stage 5

Rationale

Language

Each medium has its own system of conveying meaning, although schools have concentrated mainly on the medium of print. But over the last 100 years, the moving image medium of film has developed a particularly powerful language, which is now also used by television, video and computer software. The ways in which images are framed, sequenced, paced and combined with sounds – music and sound effects as well as words – have become a highly significant component of the information, stories and ideas we encounter every day. Everyone should have the chance to learn about how the moving image media create meaning. It is a basic skill of cineliteracy to be able to refer to devices such as framing, camera angle or editing easily and meaningfully in discussion and in critical writing. People of any age learn this most easily when they have opportunities to make and manipulate these devices in their own creative work.

Producers and Audiences

Now that there are so many different sources of communication it is an increasingly important element of basic citizenship for people to be able to identify where messages are coming from and what motivates them. It is not enough simply to be able to interpret or create moving image texts. The moving image media are huge industries and films are commodities, bought and sold by competing multinational companies. Audiences are targeted and courted in many different ways, although their real interests and responses can be very hard to identify. Everyone should be able to make informed choices about their consumption of moving image media, learning how to identify their sources and the interests they serve. By recognising that they themselves are members of audiences and larger social groups, learners can think about how their own interests relate to the ways they are defined by others. They should experience the excitement and power of producing their own moving image texts and these should be seen and discussed by real audiences.

Messages and Values

Film and television can affect our emotions and our ideas. There are many theories about the effects of the moving image and opinion is fundamentally divided as to the real extent of its power to affect behaviour. However, we all know that we can be moved, entranced, angered, delighted or bored by film and it is important to explore these responses and be able to justify them. Particular texts or types of text may have ongoing effects on our ideas, values and beliefs: we need to consider whether this is the case, how it happens and whether it matters. It is also important to think about how we might assess the potential effects of the moving image – whether these are aesthetic, moral, political or economic – on other individuals and groups. Everyone should be able to explore the relative realism of different moving image texts and have learned to distinguish between literal meanings and underlying themes. Learners should have the chance both to see and to create moving image texts in a variety of modes from documentary and dramatic realism to fantasy and non-narrative forms.

Chapter 7: Resources and resource providers

The British Film Institute

The British Film Institute is funded by the Government through the Film Council and has existed since 1933. Under the terms of its Royal Charter its role is to foster the moving image in the UK and to encourage public appreciation of film and television as culturally important media.

bfi departments

Collections houses the National Film and Television Archive which contains over 275,000 film titles and 200,000 television programmes, the Stills Library of 7,000,000 images, posters and designs, and the Museum of the Moving Image, currently touring different sites in the UK pending its reopening at the planned new Film Centre on London’s South Bank which will house all the bfi’s activities under one roof. The Access section in Collections re-releases key titles and compilations from cinema and television history, and publishes a wide range of films under the bfi Video imprint.

Exhibition provides services and facilities to over 100 cinemas across the UK, including the network of Regional Film Theatres, to ensure access for more people to a wider range of film, video and historical television material, and to educational activities and services. It also runs the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank which screens over 2000 films a year and is the central location for the annual London Film Festival.

Education includes the bfi National Library which includes over 41,000 books in 15 languages, 145,000 periodicals from over 45 countries and over 2,000,000 newspaper cuttings dating from the 1930s. It also houses the SIFT (summary of information on film and television) database which contains data on 600,000 titles and 930,000 personalities; online access to SIFT is gradually being rolled out to other libraries across the UK. Education also includes the monthly Sight and Sound magazine, bfi Publishing which produces a wide range of books on cinema and television each year, and bfi Knowledge which runs the bfi website and develops research on the moving image industries and their audiences. Education Projects is also part of the Education Department.

Education Projects

This section of the Education Department is responsible for all the bfi’s direct services to formal and informal education. Its aims are:

It addresses the widest possible range of audiences, but where choices have to be made, prioritises the under-16 age range.

Education Projects has five main areas of activity:



Contact Education Projects to receive regular mailings including the newsletter In Focus and The Catalogue. The bfi website includes a range of information of interest to teachers and learners.

The English and Media Centre

The English and Media Centre is an independent, non-profit-making educational organisation serving the needs of secondary and tertiary teachers and students of English and Media throughout the UK. Established in 1975 by the Inner London Education Authority, but independent since 1990, it now has a national and international reputation as a provider of in-service training, a publishing house for teaching and learning resources for both staffroom and classroom, and a centre of excellence. The Centre runs a variety of courses on all aspects of English, Drama and Media Studies, attended by over 1000 teachers every year from all over the UK mainland. It has close connections with examining bodies, other media education agencies, and academic PGCE departments, particularly the University of London Institute of Education; it also supports a variety of teacher-led initiatives and informal training opportunities, including:

Publications

The Centre’s catalogue now lists over 70 publications including video and CD-ROM resources, covering all aspects of secondary English and Media teaching. Teachers can download extracts from recent publications from our website. Based on a commitment to active teaching and learning, they are:

For the 11-16 age range, the Centre has produced a range of resources designed to integrate both the use and study of media within the English curriculum in relation to literary texts and language study, and specific self-contained schemes of work about the media. It will shortly be producing a series of short units with accompanying video resources focusing on the moving image. In addition, many of the Centre’s photocopiable Media Studies materials (including the Advertising, Soap and News packs) incorporate activities targeting 11-14- year-olds.

The Centre also publishes The English and Media Magazine, a twice-yearly publication with an international circulation of over 6000, which covers a range of current curriculum issues, academic debates, approaches to classroom practice, and reviews of classroom material. All publications are distributed by the National Association for the Teaching of English.

Advice and support

The Centre is frequently consulted by individual schools, local authorities and curriculum development agencies, and has produced support materials for a range of broadcasters, LEAs and advisory groups. It also houses a comprehensive reference collection of resources, and hosts events and meetings for outside agencies.

The Centre’s course programme and catalogue are circulated to every secondary school and college in the UK.

Film Education

Film Education is a registered charity funded by the film industry in the UK and the British Film Institute. Its aim is to encourage and promote the use of film and cinema within the school curriculum. Since 1985 Film Education has expanded the range of its publications and services to respond to the increasing importance of film and the moving image in UK curricula, and to meet the demand for current educational resources and support on film and filmmaking. The organisation provides a range of free educational materials, in-service training for teachers and organises three annual national events: National Schools Film Week in October, March into Movies and Sunscreens (July). These are events which incorporate free film screening programmes; one of Film Education’s aims is to encourage students to appreciate film on the cinema screen and to help teachers liaise with their local cinema manager.

Publications

Study materials, most of which are free, are written by experienced and qualified teachers who specialise in the teaching of film within UK curricula from KS1 through to GCSE, A level and GNVQ in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Scottish curriculum from the 5-14 National Guidelines to Higher Still. Each resource is written to address specific areas of the curriculum including English, Media Studies, Film and History, Geography, Design and Technology, and Art.

The teaching resources are produced in a range of forms: study guides which are illustrated booklets containing teachers’ notes, curriculum guidelines, tasks, activities and photocopiable worksheets for students; wall charts for displaying in the classroom containing detailed information, tasks and activities for students; CD-ROMs, interactive educational guides containing film clips, interviews, tasks and activities for students; study videos – trailers, clips and mini programmes to be used with study guides; TV programmes produced in conjunction with a study guide on the same film or generic area, including film footage and interviews with academics, film-makers and industry professionals. The website is designed for use by teachers and students and includes original educational material to complement the content of the Study Guides and television programmes. It also includes the latest film and education news, a section on curriculum and exam board developments and tasks and projects for students. Website materials also support in-service training and the website is being developed to deliver more teachers’ materials, more interactively. Film Education teaching staff are always available to offer advice and support to teachers, advisory bodies, education officers and cinema managers. Film Education also produces a booklet for cinema managers working with schools; one of the ways of forging stronger links between education and the film industry.

In-service Training

INSET has been developed to support the needs of teachers and trainee teachers in the primary and secondary sectors who use film in the classroom. Courses are piloted at the Film Education offices in central London and the programme is then taken ‘on the road’ to a wider audience visiting many regions throughout the UK. Courses cover a range of subjects such as the Film Industry, Film and Shakespeare, Film Language, Documentary Film, French Film and Film-makers, Producers and Audiences and Film Marketing, Using Film in the Literacy Hour, Film Across the Curriculum (Primary) . The INSET days are planned to provide courses that suit the needs of individual teachers or the specifications of training institutions, advisory bodies or whole school/college initiatives.

Newsletters

The secondary newsletter Onscreen provides teachers with a termly reference point when planning film-related lessons. The reverse of its information pages folds out into an A2 calendar of events for the staffroom wall and contains information about forthcoming events for the term as well as special offers for teachers. Cinekids is the primary schools’ newsletter which contains all Film Education news in one A4 leaflet. It includes a selection of information and special offers included in the publication mailed out to 23,000 primary schools, three times a year. Film Education currently maintains over 21,000 named primary and secondary contacts on its database, all of whom are mailed relevant study materials, free of charge, throughout the year.

Video suppliers

Most of the films mentioned in this guide are available on video.

Recommended video suppliers include:

Sources of moving image material for education:

Where to see films

Across the UK there are a considerable number of regional film theatres, small independent cinemas, and independent chains such as City Screen, Oasis and Mainline. These cinemas are often referred to as ‘cultural’ cinemas as they offer a wider range of programming such as foreign language or non-mainstream films. Some are also non-profit and publicly subsidised. A list of these cinemas is provided on the bfi website (www.bfi.org.uk) where you can also check out what they are currently showing. Many of these venues offer some level of educational activity and some have specialist education officers who do regular mailings to schools, run INSET, practical workshops, and other events. Many of the smaller venues have an enthusiastic film programmer who has taken on some educational development work and will be interested in developing dialogue with local schools.

The more familiar high street chains and multiplexes tend to concentrate on the screening of mainstream and Hollywood-produced films, and some also offer non-mainstream material on selected screens or on particular days of the week. Some have existing contacts with schools through events such as National Schools Film Week and managers who are keen to maintain links with schools.

It is therefore possible that there is a cinema within reach of your school that is sympathetic to receiving school groups to screenings, possibly at a reduced ticket price. There may be a manager or programmer who is willing to discuss programming films of your choice and to take groups of students around the cinema. There could be an education officer who will run special events for students and for teachers, either one-off or in series. Some venues can also show archive material from both film and television. Venue-based events can include student conferences such as ‘inside industry’ sessions on film production or marketing, and teacher- or actor-led sessions for specific age groups and curriculum subjects.

Another important source of moving image material – especially but not exclusively of interest to History teachers – are film archives. Some local museums and record offices keep archives of locally relevant film, video and television material which may be available to schools. But there are also Regional Film Archives in England, National Film Archives in Wales and Scotland, and there is the National Film and Television Archive at the British Film Institute which has one of the world’s largest holdings of moving image material. These archives are also listed on the bfi website. All of them have a strong and developing educational remit and are keen to make their holdings available to education, either through screenings or through the publication of material on video.

A new perspective on landscape? Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)

Glossary

This glossary has a number of different functions. First of all it is intended to explain any terms relating to the moving image with which some users of this guide might not be familiar, and which crop up either in the subject grids, or in the learning progression model. Some more commonplace words and terms are also glossed as a way of drawing attention to the range of different meanings they have.

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