Lesson Plans
Subject: Film & Video Production
Description:
In this lesson the students will be slightly immersed in the commercial world of advertising. Since this is written for a beginning multimedia class I would not delve too deep into the subject since I would probably delve deeper into a more advanced class. I have decided that the main form of instruction would be through discussion with the class. This promotes critical thinking and allows the entire class to participate equally. There are several questions that I have listed to ask the students to help them in their critical thinking and to help them learn more about advertising. The students start out answering the questions I have listed as consumers or viewers of the advertisements because they are accustomed to that role. After a little while I give the students the opportunity to switch roles and think more like an advertiser. This allows them to step into a new role and see some of the conventions of advertising that they don’t see as a consumer. I then break the students into groups of 3-4 to discuss an advertising strategy for a particular company or product of the class’ choosing. This allows them to work in groups and develop better teamwork skills. Groups of 3-4 are best so that everyone can participate equally.
Subject: English (Language Arts)
Description:
Students will learn how to adapt a scene from a play into a scene for a film. It is assumed that the students already understand how the codes of film work.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: Students will complete a during-viewing activity in which they write down all of the different perspectives presented about Fred A. Leuchter in Mr. Death.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
This lesson is based on Core Principle 1 (Media Literacy Education requires active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create) and invites students to learn how to recognize how media messages are constructed for particular audiences. They will learn to analyze the different tactics used to attract different audiences. They will also write a commercial that would appeal to them.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: Students will identify the elements of Realism and Formalism that can be found in Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (or another appropriate silent film).
Subject: English (Language Arts)
Description: By looking at Walter Dean Myers’s novel Monster and considering other various source texts and adaptations, students will become familiar with the complex way that adaptations relate to their source texts. Students will create a map from a source text to its various adaptations. Finally, the final project, a student-created adaptation is included in this lesson.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The students will review/remember all the different elements discussed and practiced in previous classes and apply them to the analysis of a single film. The students will have a foundation for analyzing the film Repentance with the intent to utilize everything learned about filmic elements over the previous six lessons. Their abilities to analyze the film will be assessed in their response papers due next week.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The students will understand the significance of camera movement in film. The students will have a foundation for analyzing camera movement in Shall We Dansu?. Their abilities to analyze the film's camera movement will be assessed in their response papers due next week.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The students will understand the significance of characters in film—their traits and how the represent the society in which they were created. The students will have a foundation for analyzing the characters in Three Men and a Cradle. Their abilities to analyze the film's characters will be assessed in their response papers due next week.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The students will understand the significance of the use of color in film. The students will have a foundation for looking for the use of color in Amélie. Their abilities to analyze the color in the film will be assessed in their response papers due next week.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: After learning about the requirements for the final project for this unit, the students will fill out a comparison and contrast matrix in which they analyze the style, form, and content of the screwball comedy genre, working individually or in groups. As the students view Double Indemnity, they will compare and contrast the style, form, and content of this film to the screwball comedy genre and make predictions/observations about how this film may represent the film noir genre. Following a large-group discussion on student observations and percetions about film noir, the students will watch a brief portion of the American Cinema documentary about Film Noir. NOTE: this lesson plan could easily cover 2-3 days of instruction.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
Students will synthesize their understanding of generic conventions and mediated reality by examining and discussing how contemporary forces influence teen genre conventions.
Subject: Film & Video Production
Description:
Students will demonstrate proper planning and design by utilizing an instructional design model such as ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) in the development of multimedia projects
Subject: English (Language Arts)
Description:
Students will create MySpace accounts for fictional characters as a form of character analysis.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: Students read a brief outline of what the term "genre" means. They will apply this concept to both music and film by outlining the specific style, form, and content of specific genres, working in groups. Afterwards, students will watch a brief documentary outlining the elements of the screwball comedy genre.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
Students will demonstrate their understanding of mediated reality by capturing “real” images in the classroom and creating a pact that defines what would be required for them as media creators to capture reality in their media productions.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The students will understand the significance of depth of field in film. The students will have a foundation for analyzing depth of field in The Scent of Green Papaya. Their abilities to analyze the film's depth of field will be assessed in their response papers due next week.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
Core Principle 5: Media Literacy Education recognizes that media are a part of culture and function as agents of socialization.
Core principle #5 suggests that: Media Literacy Education recognizes that media are a part of culture and function as agents of socialization. This includes showing diverse voices, perspectives and communities within our society as well as giving opportunities to examine alternative media and international perspectives. Also, this principle addresses topics like violence, gender, sexuality, racism, stereotyping and other issues of representation. This also gives media owners, producers, and members of the creative process a responsibility in facilitating mutual understanding of the impact of media on individuals and on society.
Subject: English (Language Arts)
Description: Students will begin to investigate the economic factors associated with the production of adaptations. They will consider the large volume of media productions based no adaptations and prepare to compete in “Film Producer’s Apprentice,” by working with a group to create a marketing plan and an adaptation for their classmates.
Subject: English (Language Arts)
Description: In the completion of the two lessons focusing on the economic factors at play with the creation of adaptations, students will present their marketing plans and adaptation ideas to a group of judges in the “Film Producer’s Apprentice” game. This exercise, and the debriefing afterward, will help students to understand these economic factors.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: Continuing with the previous day’s lesson, students continue filling out a packet of film vocabulary terms. The packet contains a series of graphic organizers which help to visually represent the relationship of different film terms. The students will fill out the definitions of the vocabulary terms as they are presented in a lecture with film clip examples.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description:
The objectives of this lesson are to:
1) allow the students to realize that every type of media contains messages – both explicit and implicit – that a piece can have multiple messages, and that these messages can be intentional, and unintentional.
2) Help them learn that they have the ability to see these messages (both explicit and implicit), and that they have the power to agree, disagree, or even partially agree and/or disagree with them.
3) Help the students to begin to think on their own how to detect explicit and the harder to find implicit messages in the media they consume on a daily basis.
4) Help them to be aware and consider that the media they produce will, too, have implicit and explicit messages – even if the messages are unintended.
5) Have them realize and understand that each individual gains different meanings from the media we receive based on our own experiences we have had in life, and because that there is no right or wrong answer on what a piece of media’s message means to them.
Core Principle 6: Media Literacy Education affirms that people use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: In order to teach the ways that music is used to enhance the meaning of the visuals in film, students will view a series of film clips and analyze how the images and the music combine together to make meaning.
Subject: Film Studies (Film as Literature, Media Literacy)
Description: The students will understand the significance of the historical context of a film—the history that influences the characters and story of a film.
The students will have a foundation for analyzing the film The Lives of Others with an understanding of the history it presents. Their abilities to analyze the film's historical context will be assessed in their response papers due next week.