The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

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The Teachers’ Animation Toolkit
WORKSHEET: GENRE TRANSLATION
Teachers’ note:
In this exercise, students translate a moving image text for example 
a documentary, animation, news item, TV commercial or scene 
from a feature fi lm–into a print genre such as a newspaper item, a 
magazine feature, an extract from a novel, a short story or a poem.
Another option is to give the students a printed text and ask them to 
convert it into moving image form, fi rst as script or storyboard, and 
then if possible as video (as a brief extract or ‘try-out’ of one scene).
The purpose of the exercise is to develop insights into how the 
medium affects the message and the way it is conveyed to its 
intended audience. It can prompt discussion of how meaning 
can change when information is presented in different forms or 
transposed to another medium. Each medium has its own language, 
conventions and genres. The moving image is more appropriate for 
some kinds of content or structure and the written, printed word is 
more appropriate for others.
The exercise should prompt questions such as:
What can you say in print that you cannot tell or show in 
moving images?
What can you show in moving images that you cannot 
convey in print?
What kinds of story, information and ideas are best told in 
print and what are
best told in moving images?
Materials:
Sketchbooks or exercise books, pens, pencils
Resources:
An article from a recent newspaper or magazine, or
A video clip from broadcast television, or
An animation clip (See 
A Brief History
p. 9 for suggestions)

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Cineliteracy
53
Students watching an animation

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