This week I tried out Animoto. I had been aware of it for some time and had seen it being used to great effect. However I simply never got around to using it or found a different app to suit the need I had at that time. I found that you only get to create 30 second videos before you have to pay for extra length to your video, which was an initial disappointment. But you get what you pay for in life and I think Animoto could well be worth the money. The video creation interface is really as simple as a company could make it. It's easy to add pictures, videos and even your own soundtrack to your creations. Animoto has a plethora of design templates for your video and I imagine you would be a long time using it before you felt limited by their available choices. Overall I'd recommend it for teachers as an accessible and quick way to create teacher resources or to help pupils create a video project. Here are a couple of quick resources I made this week for a Leaving Certificate class on The Truman Show.
Update: Thanks to a tip off from @MrAbe101 I found out that teachers can apply for a free educational account here. This extends the video length to three minutes and allows you to create 50 videos with your class in a six month period. I applied and was immediately accepted to the upgraded account. I created the video on Casablanca, below, as an example of how to use the extended time.
Is this what you imagined the characters looked like?
Let me put my cards on the table straight away Leaving Cert. class of 2013: DON'T WATCH IT! This is not a film review ( I haven't even seen it yet!). It opens in Irish cinemas this weekend. I advised my sixth year class today not to watch. Not because I hate Leonardo DiCaprio, which I don't. Not because I can only hear Carey Mulligan's English accent every time she tries to feign an American one. And not because Tobey Maguire is generally annoying in movies, no comment. I asked them not to watch it as it's not on the Leaving Cert. course this year. The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald is. Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is not.
Pupils using details from the movie in a Leaving Cert. essay is the ultimate fear for a teacher. I'm not going to patronise the vast vast majority of Leaving Cert. pupils. They just wouldn't do that. I've already heard Luhrmann discuss in interviews why he didn't have a Gatsby funeral scene. There was a cartoon expulsion of coffee from my mouth when I heard there was no funeral scene initially.
No funeral!? Owl Eyes, Nick and Gatsby's dad will
be even more heart broken!
So I listened to the rest of the interview and although I didn't agree with the director's choice I certainly understood it. The idea that an under prepared pupil might go see the movie and then criticise Fitzgerald in an essay for not giving Gatsby a good send off (those that have read the novel know he doesn't really get a decent one anyway) is an idea that would genuinely give me sleepless nights.
Although that is the worst case scenario, this is not the reason pupils should not go see the movie. The reason you shouldn't see the movie is that these are Luhrmann's interpretations of the characters, not yours. I read the novel in college and in my mind's eye Gatsby is not Leonardo DiCaprio. Daisy is not Carey Mulligan and Tom Buchanan is certainly not Joel Edgerton. You've invested time and effort to learn about these characters. They should feel like people you know. Why? Well because if you know the characters (KNOW the characters as I bark to my pupils) it will give your Leaving Cert essay a vitality and honesty of effort that will make it rise above the rest. Yes question key words, PCLM and language range are all important but passion is quite often the x-factor between your essay being good and it being great. Seeing a movie adaptation of a literary work can irretrievably damage your love of a certain character.
So if you genuinely feel like you can seperate the movie and the novel just weeks before the Leaving Cert., go for it. I'm sure the movie is great. I just strongly feel you are denying yourself of a possible strength your essay could and should have: your imagination. Until the exams are over you can console yourself with the fantastic soundtrack that accompanies the movie. I've taken, for me, the stand out song from the album Florence + The Machine's emotive Over the Love and created some revision questions to accompany it. Scant consolation I know but trust me, it'll be worth it!
Music Video Revision Questions
Q.1 Florence + The Machine make many literary referecnes to the novel in the song's lyrics. Choose two that you think are particularly effective in capturing the emotions of the novel. (10 Marks)
Q.2 'Now there's green light in my eyes'. The song's story is told from the perspective of Daisy. Would Daisy have made a better narrator than Nick? (10 Marks)
Q.3 'Cause you're a hard soul to save, with an ocean in the way' What do you think Florence + The Machine (speaking from Daisy's perspective) mean by this? (10 Marks)
Q.4 The song is called 'Over the Love'. 'The Great Gatsby is just a typical love story' Do you agree or disagree with this question? (10 Marks)
Over the course of this year I have been creating a series of Show Me videos on the film Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuaron. I have been using the film as a text for the Higher Level Leaving Certificate Exam 2013. We compared the film in class through the comparative modes of THEME and CULTURAL CONTEXT (the third comparative mode of Literary Genre is briefly discussed in different videos). Our theme was Persistence and the other texts we used were The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
Didn't do those modes or theme? Don't panic.I tried to create the videos in such a way that they would be helpful to pupils no matter what comparative modes you used or theme you had in your class. Each video discusses roughly 13 minutes of the film at a time. A major reason for creating the videos was that, I found, pupils experienced difficulty in recollecting key (no pun intended!) images and quotes from the film compared to their written texts. As such, each video looks at the key visual images from that section of the film along with the key quotations from the characters.
Listed below are links to each individual video. I hope it might be a helpful resource to teachers in future years and make life a little easier for our stressed pupils in the middle of the revision season 2013!
1.Video 1 and 2 - Link to the introductory
video and the first 13 minute analysis video. It might make the long revision
process ahead a little easier! (Note: Spelling should read Foogies in video 1)
2.Video 3 - This video looks at some major
themes from this section of the movie and the cultural context presented within
the film. The end of the video also contains the major quotes from this section
of the movie.
3.Video 4- In this section: Julian dies, Kee
is pregnant and dogs love Theo...there's lots to talk about!
4.Video 5 - - Luke's rise to power. The development of Kee and Theo's friendship. Where are the Azores!? Patrick gets kicked from a car...again!
5.Video 6-Jasper makes the ultimate sacrifice.Theo
finds a reason to go on.No schools in the future: a good thing? Does the Human
Project exist at all !?
6.Video 7 - Sid thinks Sid has a great plan but gets
'blocked' by Theo. Does baby Dylan completely change the cultural context of
her world? Bex Hill: Refugee or concentration camp? Miriam's ultimate
sacrifice: for the cause or for friendship? Or both? (Also hear what a complete
mental block sounds like at about 1:45 into the video!)
7.Video 8 - People are essentially good. Theo
shows what courage looks like. Luke has his Dunsinane moment. Soldiers love
babies but love fighting more. Why does the movie end at sea? The Tomorrow.
This is the last in a series of ShowMe videos looking at the film Children of Men as Leaving Certificate Comparative text. I will be posting one more video to highlight some revision and teaching ideas in the comparative course in a more general sense. If you have any questions on the movie please don't hesitate to ask @NewEnglishBlog on Twitter. If there is enough I will include them in the final video.
The fourth video in a series looking at Children of Men as a comparative text for the Leaving Certificate English exam. In this section: Julian dies, Kee is pregnant and dogs love Theo...there's lots to talk about!
Please find below the third video looking at the film Children of Men as a comparative studies text. The video looks at some major themes from this section of the movie and the cultural context presented within the film. The end of the video also contains the major quotes from this section of the movie.
Over the coming weeks I will be posting a collection of ShowMe videos on the film Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The film appears as a text on the Leaving Certificate English Comparative Course. The movie is set in the year 2027 when humans have lost the ability to conceive children. The plot is centred around a character called Theo and his quest to bring a young pregnant woman, Kee, to safety. The videos will focus on the comparative modes of Theme and Cultural Context. Each video will focus on roughly 13 minutes of the movie. Each video will contain annotated still shots from the movie and will end with the major quotes from that section of the movie written for your convenience. Posted below is the introductory video and the first 13 minute analysis video. It might make the long revision process ahead a little easier!
Characters are shaped by their cultural context. To what extent
would you agree with this statement, with reference to the texts you have
studied?
Macbeth: Feudalism
The Road: Dystopian
The
society of a time indubitably dictates the personality that its inhabitants are
expected to conform to; their behavior, their morality – even their appearance.
The three texts I have studied – Children of Men (COM), Macbeth and The Road – each
portrays a different facet of this idea, showing the effects of this influence
on the characters existing within these diverse cultures. The Road depicts the
world as it would be when all remnants of society have fallen apart. The
cultural context of the Father and son forces them to lose some traits of
humanity is central to their survival within their dystopia. The nightmare that
is their reality leaves them no choice but to conform to the
“Barren.Silent.Godless.” world, at least to an extent, if they have any hope of
surviving. This idea recurs in (COM). - a culture on the brink of extinction,
where the desperation pervading the world”since women stopped being able to
have babies” is the driving force behind Theo’s and Kee’s mission. For them, it
is the last chance to survive, and often it is the recklessness spurred on by
this desperation that keeps them alive. Macbeth, while devoid of the anonymity
created by the seeming irrelevance of existence in The Road, or the desperation
to extend the lifespan of humanity in (COM), provides an extreme towards the other end
of the spectrum. Macbeth’s tragic ambition is undoubtedly nurtured by his cultural
context. Within it, it is the lack of anonymity that creates the pressure to
”dare do all that may become a man”, and the ambitiousness to climb to the top
of the feudalistic ladder, to prove his worth. This helps shape Macbeth into the man that
persists until his tragic end. These three texts show the profound effect societal structures, or lack there of, can have on a character both in terms of their actions and their
personalities.
Sixth year students Aisling Wyer and Luke Tai share with NewEnglish a presentation they have created on Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. The presentation specifically focuses on the theme of power in the novel. The pupils studied the novel as part of their Leaving Certificate comparative course here in the college.
