Lessons
Is there a lesson for that?
Start here to browse practical and analytical lessons and everything in between. This page is for complete lessons and activities to do with the class.
Browse the pages below to find lessons on various aspects of the coursework.
These lessons will help prepare students for the film portfolio and the collaborative film.
Core Role Production Lessons
Directing Lessons
"I am just the band leader, and I just keep everything in tune".– Wong Kar Wai
Editing Lessons
...so it is the editor’s job to propose alternate scenarios as bait to encourage the sleeping dream to rise to its defence and thus reveal itself more fully. Walter Murch
Cinematography Lessons
I feel every shot, every camera move, every frame, and the way you frame something and the choice of lens, I see all those things are really important on every shot. Roger Deakins
Screenwriting Lessons
“All I do is invent little people in my head, then make them have imaginary conversations with each other. – Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, American Fiction (2023)
Sound Design Lessons
"Most sound work in films is done very quickly and at the end of the schedule where it's just jammed together and you always wish that you had more sympathy."– Ben Burtt
Production Lessons Outside the Core Roles
Lesson: Music for Film
Unless we're also musicians, film teachers often feel unprepared to help students create music for their films. This is problematic, especially if students want to use music for their Collaborative Films....
Student Film Critique
Class critiques are an important way to improve student's performance and confidence. They are also important tools to build their reflective analysis skills. This approach uses Visual Thinking Strategies...
Crew Research: Voice and Choice
Dive into your screens today with a deeper dive into your film role. Here you will have some required viewing as well as some selections to make on your own.
These lessons will help prepare students for the Comparative Study.
Lesson: Film Theories
In this Lesson, students will research and apply a film theory. Students will learn that film theories are lenses through which we can examine and analyze how meaning is both consciously and unconsciously...
Mini Lesson: The Shining & Auteur Theory
This Lesson introduces the Auteur Theory through Stanley Kubrick's unique approach to The Shining. If you are using The Shining to introduce film theory as described in our curricular approach, this mini-lesson...
Film Theory Analytical Tasks
This series of written responses can help assess students' understanding and application of a variety of film theories. On this page we'll discuss a number of ways that you might approach this understanding...
Unit Plan: Film Theory
"The most important parts of a film are the mysterious parts— beyond the reach of reason and language."-Stanley Kubrick When we experience films beyond the reach of reason and language is where film...
These lessons will help students prepare for the Textual Analysis and Comparative Study.
Amelie in Analysis
Amelie is a complex film both in the Paris that it portrays and the Paris it doesn't. Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain is widely considered a beautiful film of a beautiful city filled with beautiful...
Film Analysis: Visual Thinking Strategies
Class analysis is an important foundation for independent analytical skills as you watch films together as a class, it can be important to stop at different moments to focus on the analytical understanding...
Mini Lesson: Film Language as Subtext
Subtext is not only found in the screenplay; subtext is the method through which film language can create meaning in multiple ways. This lesson uses a scene from Twin Peaks to show how much meaning can...
Worksheet: Film Analysis
This is a general worksheet for film analysis. This can be used multiple times for a variety of films to help prepare students for the Textual Analysis.
Analysis: Pan's Labyrinth
There is a lot to unpack when you're in the labyrinth Pan's Labyrinth, director Guillermo Del Toro creates meaning on many different levels. Let's examine how and why he decided to make a supernatural...
Lesson: Vampires Introduce the Comparative Study
Vampires come in all shapes and sizes. They hunt humans. They help humans. They are even good subjects for a comparative study. In this introduction to the comparative study, students think about a comparison...
Lesson: Introducing the Comparative Study
Film Focus? Film Topic? What Films do I choose? So many questions. Here is where we can help students start finding answers.
Selected Pages
Lessons
Student Film Critique
Class critiques are an important way to improve student's performance and confidence. They are also important tools to build...
Lessons
Sound Lab: A Foley Exercise
For a quick activity, pass this handout to students for a sound design challenge.
Lessons
Sound Randomizer
Create a sound with the following characteristics:DiegeticOnscreenInternalFaithfulSynchronousEmpatheticRandomize All function...
Lessons
Mini Lesson: Types of Sound
This lesson covers different kinds of sound.This lesson will help in the analysis of how sound creates meaning in film,...
Lessons
Lesson: Foley Sound
"An image or a sound on its own is nothing. It takes on meaning only in relationship to what transforms it."Robert Bresson
