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Section 3: Overview

Movie Concepts, Styles, and Settings

Why do filmmakers make particular stylistic choices, and how might each movie change if the filmmaker chose a different style? After viewing the opening sequences of various movies set in high schools, we will compare each director’s choices in techniques to develop setting, mood, and atmosphere. Individually, we will analyze a movie set in a high school and consider the filmmakers’ stylistic choices and the effects they create. In response to that movie, we will prepare an oral review of the film and present it to a team of fellow movie reviewers.

  • Lesson 1:

    We will view the opening sequences of two movies set in high school—the comedy Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1989) and the drama The Hate U Give (George Tillman, Jr., 2018)—and analyze how the filmmakers use storytelling choices (including narrative structure, dialogue and voiceover, music and sound, camera angles and other visual choices) to establish the setting and style of the films. We will review the term genre, and examine film-clip examples of other terms from the Filmmaking Glossary.

  • Lesson 2:

    We will read a review of The Hate U Give to learn more about that movie and the language of film criticism. We will analyze and emulate model mentor sentences drawn from the review.

  • Lesson 3:

    How has the style of movie reviews changed in the era of the Internet and social media? We will preview the Section Diagnostic, which involves presenting an oral movie review, and watch a video of a review by a professional YouTube critic. As we watch a movie set in high school independently, we will search for online oral reviews and begin to think about how we might present our own reviews of our chosen movies.

  • Lesson 4:

    Considering the varied genres, settings, and styles of the movie clips we’ve seen so far and the features we’ve viewed independently, we will think about the possible genre, concept, setting, and style of our own original movie and learn to use the Movie Concept Tool.

  • Lesson 5:

    We will review our Understanding a Movie Tools for movies set in high school with our peers and teacher. To learn more about how filmmakers use visual techniques, we will read an article about Alfred Hitchcock‘s use of camera angles to create particular visual effects. We will use what we learn from the article as we initially plan our own movies, using the Movie Concept Tool.

  • Lesson 6:

    We will learn about ways to plan and communicate ideas about visual style and learn about lookbooks, tone reels, and mood boards in the Filmmaking Glossary, in preparation for planning the visual elements of our own movie.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will deliver a 3–5 minute oral review for our independently viewed movie, in the style of a YouTube movie review. As a team, we will develop a claim about how the various settings in which high school movies play out influence their styles and messages, and we will individually write a paragraph that explains how your movie exemplifies that claim.

  • Lesson 8:

    We will review the teacher’s feedback on our Section Diagnostic and will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 9:

    We will share the understanding we have gained through our independent reading and continue to read our texts.