Does the average student spend the majority of her time reading a book, or does the typical teenager prefer to be engrossed in some form of media, be it video games, television, the Internet, or movies? While the obvious answers to these questions may be a frustrating truth for a librarian, the denial of these truths is fruitless. Instead of agonizing over the situation, perhaps teachers and media center specialists can learn to harness the energy students spend enjoying media. In Valerie Muller’s article “Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory,” she encourages teachers to use film in the classroom to “help students better understand complicated literary theories” while still encouraging excitement for the lesson (32).
Muller begins her article by explaining that no matter how much teachers and librarians may love “printed texts, students are inherently more interested in multimedia—film, television, cell phones, music, the Internet—than traditional print texts” (32). While many use film in the classroom, Muller believes that too many of them teach “film as literature” (33). In other words, instead of treating film like a different type of text that employs both sound and visuals, teachers ask the same questions about film as they do about literature. Muller has several problems with this plan: 1. If the two mediums “are taught in nearly the same way,” struggling students will have the same problems with literature as they do with film. 2. “[T]he film-as-literature approach ignores the fact that a director has created a film text to shape the viewer’s reactions. 3. If the teacher only asks the same kinds of questions that he asks about literature, the film will fail to challenge all of the students. Muller is not proposing that teachers avoid using movies in the classroom; instead, she just argues that film needs to be taught “as film,” not as literature (33).
When film is taught as film, the students have a unique experience. Because film makes use of “lighting, music, and camera angles” the instructor needs to teach these elements in the classroom and incorporate them into the class’s analysis. If educators do not know about these elements already, Muller suggests reading Film Art: An Introduction or Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom. Once the instructor is educated on the subject, she can start incorporating movies into her units. According to the article, if an instructor opens the year with a “short unit on film techniques,” the students will be ready to appreciate film in all its facets when it is brought into the classroom.
Muller made some great points about the qualities that are uniquely film. I love the idea of taking an entirely new approach to the classroom by implementing movies and the cinematic techniques that are inherently a part of the film experience. Bringing these new experiences to students should be exciting for them and make the classroom more of an adventure. Furthermore, they may even begin to appreciate the movies that they watch in their spare time on a deeper level when they realize how much energy goes into each scene in a film.
Best of all, her article led me to think of ways to implement film into my future profession as a librarian. Rather than simply saying that film uses “lightning, camera angle, and framing” and determining what the director is trying to get across with these “cinematic tools,” I could ask the students what a novelist may have done differently to convey the same message (34). For example, if students have determined that the film used a high angle shot in order to make the character look weak, I could ask my students how a novelist would have made the character seem weak in that moment without the visual image. Students could do a creative writing assignment in which they turn a scene from a movie into a short story while being aware of how they translate the visuals and sounds the director uses into words on a page.
The reverse of this exercise could help students think critically as well. If students are reading a book after we have done a unit on film, the students could write a paper or create a storyboard showing how a scene would work on film without losing any of the information. These kind of exercises unite film and literature in a way that does not demean either; instead, they encourage students to see that each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages for its audience while helping students to interact with texts and develop the critical thinking skills that are so beneficial in life.
Because teachers have so much to cover in their classroom and they often use film already, librarians could serve as the experts before a class watches film. Introducing the film terminology as Muller describes could be a great lesson for a librarian to present. Then, the students would be more prepared to watch the films they watch in class!
Works Cited
Muller, Valerie. “Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory.” English Journal 95.3 (Jan. 2006): 32-38. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Jan. 2008.
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