Film and Popular Culture: Past, Present, Future

year long elective

Subject Overview

This English elective allows students to understand different film techniques and how these are used to engage viewers. We consider how directors use film with intent to teach or reveal a message to the audience. Students have the opportunity to explore their own creativity by story and script writing.  

Content and ideas:

In this subject you will consider questions like: 

• How do director’s use knowledge and skill to create a film? 

• What sort of ideas could your own film or series explore? 

• What are messages do directors communicate to us and how do they do this effectively? 

In first semester, our exploration will be based on film reviews and analysing scenes. You will study a how films engage and appeal to a target audience. You will explore the structure of films and how stories are told in cinema. 

In second semester, you will analyse texts from a director of your choice and explore their history and films by researching and analysing their works and past. There is a creative component to this study, where students design their own scripts and screenplays to reflect key ideas. Students have the chance to explore topics and ideas that are important to them through their own storytelling abilities

Typical class activities:

• Class discussion and debate in response to provocations and ideas

• Analysing multimodal texts; close analytical viewing of film scenes

• Exploring the way current events influence the creation of texts

• Groupwork tasks such as jigsaw activities and coproduction of screenplay

• Creating original scripts from design briefs

Skills focus:

• Analysing the values presented in texts – what is the author trying to tell us?

• Creating and presenting our own interpretation of a text

• Analysing the way that social issues shape texts

• Identifying the way texts seek to challenge our thinking

• Closely analysing texts using metalanguage

• Analytical writing

Assessment Tasks:

• Film reviews based on evidence and reason 

• A short script including creating an outline and screenplay  

• A ‘Director’s retrospective’ including film selection, design of the guide cover, a persuasive introduction to the guide and a comparison of two of your selected films 

• Research project and presentation 

Do this subject if:

• You enjoy discussing and analysing films. 

• You want to improve your analytical and creative writing abilities. 

• You’re intrigued by the emotional and intellectual power of film. 

• You’re interested by ideas raised in a variety of popular and critically acclaimed films

Do not do this subject if: 

• You are trying to avoid reading and writing, because we still do lots of it. 

• Only have a passing interest in film or TV.  

Content Advisory: This subject contains in-depth study of films with a variety of mature subject matter. Films studied will be rated M or below.

Student testimonials

"Film is great for learning about film structures, learning about new films and watching movies and is great fun."

“In this class, you get to appreciate the finer details in films in comparing and analysing great movies, gaining a new perspective on films and essay writing skills for every year level.”

"I recommend this subject to FLE B students because it is a good subject to develop essay writing and prepare people for Pre VCE English.”