The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

KS 3 Year 9 Age 13
FILM LANGUAGE
For year 7 pupils the key concerns 
of Film Language centre on issues 
of how a narrative story is structured 
and how images and sounds work 
together. Hence, your classwork 
would be concerned with discussing 
a fi lm in terms of music, location, 
interior and exterior settings and the 
role of actors and performance. 
Film Language focuses on the 
differences between fi lm, video 
and television and allows scope for 
comparative study. Furthermore, how 
meaning is constructed through the 
editing of image and sound. Identifying 
major media styles and narrative 
forms is also central as is the ways in 
which style relates to technology.
Film Language looks at how fi lm, TV and 
video styles and narrative forms can relate to 
authors, the production context and the social 
and cultural context.
PRODUCERS AND 
AUDIENCES
Explore the importance of genre to 
our understanding of fi lms. There is 
also a consideration of the intended 
audience of a fi lm text and how 
differing audiences bring differing 
responses to a given fi lm text.
The key concern here is with the 
relationship between understanding 
the demands of pre production, 
production, post production and 
exhibition and how these issues 
relate to matters of creation, 
infl uence, intent and response to a 
fi lm.
Producers and Audiences there is the aim 
to describe and explain how authors, genres 
and stars generate meaning. Pupils are also 
encouraged to identify and describe some of 
the ways in which fi lm, video and television 
institutions relate to social, cultural and 
political contexts. Pupils will also need to 
relate distribution, exhibition and audience. 
MESSAGES AND 
VALUES
Messages and Values concerns 
the class with being able to identify 
the level of realism to which a fi lm 
aims and where the line between 
the real and the fantastic can be 
drawn. This is a particular area of 
interest in terms of animation.
Messages and Values of a fi lm 
are considered in terms of how 
social groups, events and ideas 
are represented. Pupils are also 
encouraged to explain and justify 
judgements and personal responses 
and argue for alternative ways of 
representing a group event or idea. 
Pupils are also encouraged to 
discuss and evaluate texts with strong 
social or ideological messages. 
The focus is on discussing the ideological 
messages in mainstream texts. Pupils must 
also describe and analyse different levels 
of realism on offer (visual and emotional 
realism–the choices a character makes and 
their reaction to events). Finally, pupils should 
engage with explaining the relationship 
between aesthetic style and social and 
political meaning.

---

Ci
nel
it
era
cy