I am putting together a film class and need help!

Basically, I'm doing a film class for my High School called "Storytelling in Film", and I need to put together the syllabus. I'm trying to think of what kinds of things I could discuss, what I could show, that kind of thing. Any ideas?

Use lots of Spielberg, Scorsese and John Ford.

Just say, "Mise-en-scène," a lot, and you should do fine.

I am "planning" to teach at some point (got a few more semesters!) and have been thinking about getting a film class together as an elective if I could swing it.

Personally I would start with silent films (Chaplin and Metropolis are what I would use) and then just move up on through the years, hitting all the "best" movies/genres. One film I would show (and I love) is Singin in the Rain, its a good movie, and it hits a good "time" in Hollywood. IE Golden age from silent to talky.

Talk about the concept of narrative. That's not just the storyline, but how things are expressed. Look at how a movie can express things by showing without dialogue, or how music can alter the mood. Repeated musical themes are also great for this.

Perhaps showing an adaptation would be good, so you can compare how things are expressed in the film to how they are in the book.

There is the necessity of storytelling shorthand, which is what TV Tropes is all about. The idea being that we don't need every possible detail to explain a character or plot point. You see two people pass by and they just nod at each other, that means they are just acquaintences. Another two people pass by and they smile brightly and wave at each other, that means they are close friends. All done without any dialogue. Even with dialogue, the more understated the better.

Silent Films: Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari, some Buster Keaton, some Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times is a good bet), Metropolis. Touch on the importance of German Expressionist film as well as Western Film.

If you really want to get interesting, show them something from the Soviet Constructivist period. Like, the steps sequence from Battleship Potempkin. Actually, that's pretty damn important if you want to talk about the development of montage.

Italian Neo-realism's also fun. For a certain definition of fun, anyway. Bicycle Thieves is a classic.

Maybe touch on Riefenstahl. Nazi films.

Of course they'd want to do a lot of American Blockbusters, so maybe go with a mix of films that consider film and Hollywood, like Rear Window, Day Of The Locusts, The Maltese Falcon, and classics, like Alien, The Shining and Pulp Fiction. Maybe a musical, like Singing In The Rain. A good exercise would be comparing Alien to Aliens, actually, and talking about the shift in cinema that indicated and the development of the modern action movie.

Digital cinema's important too. Phantom Menace is probably the most important film at the beginning of the trend, but you could show them Avatar if you don't want to deal with that headache (well, they're both headaches, but what ya gonna do.) Or that film... Midnight Fishing? that was recorded only on iphones. I've not seen it, but it's decent.

Eastern Cinema's important too. Chungkung Express was something I was quite taken with, but I don't recall how appropriate it'd be for a class. J-Horror with The Ring? You could pick a foreign language film that's been adapted and talk about the adaptation process (though the only films I can think of right now are Funny Games and Let The Right One In, both of which the parent's council might have problems with. Edit: The Ring might work here.) or something that was adapted from a novel.

Queer cinema and camp cinema shouldn't be ignored either. Strangers On A Train, Streetcar Named Desire, Philladelphia (ugh, but it'd got a point to be made there), The Talented Mr Ripley, ect. ect.

Documentaries?

That's something to go on.

edited 4th Jan '12 2:47:48 AM by Nicknacks

in my film as lit class
we used Jaws, Rear Window, The Godfather, and Citizen Kane
and There Will Be Blood
i recco all of them as well as diving deep into silent films as mentioned above

You could just show all of Battleship Potemkin, it's fairly short.

You could pick a foreign language film that's been adapted and talk about the adaptation process

Maybe Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven?

edited 4th Jan '12 7:24:46 AM by EgregiousEric

Or Yojimbo and A Fistful Of Dollars.

Given your selected title - Storytelling in Film - I would start with Syd Field's "Screenplay" and his follow-up book, plus some others on the screen writing process. The major point is that writing for film is different than writing a novel because it is a visual medium which gives it certain strengths and limitations. That also explains why so many adaptations suck vis-a-vis the original novel but short stories tend to translate well to the big screen.

The other point is the predominant 3-act structure (which Field calls a paradigm). The origins go all the way back to Aristotle's poetics but most modern movies, particularly American movies, follow the structure. It's a good place to start and then segue into deviations from that paradigm.

A good topic to hit on is the "language" of camera work and how it all fits together to tell the story. You can look at a shooting script (rather than the screenplay) and examine the use of establishing shots, PO Vs, pans, jump cuts, fades, etc.

Finally, I would suggest you look at the evolution of cinematic storytelling. It is a lot more pronounced in television, where modern tv series would be almost unintelligible to a 1950s audience, but I think that has happened in film as well.

And if you want to look at Yojimbo and A Fist Full of Dollars, then don't forget Last Man Standing. A more stark contrast is La Femme Nikita and Point of No Return.

Necroing this thread because I'm putting together a film class for a local Community Ed. program, and I need some help choosing films.

The main goal will be to make it a sort of crash-course for film literacy (like tropes and techniques), but I'm also going to include stuff about

Another thing I wanna do is to use a bunch of movies to explain different concepts multiple times over: Production stuff like directing, acting, cinematography, sound and sound design, music, and effects (both traditional and CGI), but also the history of film (both Hollywood and foreign, maybe a dash of The Auteur Theory) and the different genres: Horror, Film Noir, Western, Science Fiction, etc.

Other goals and constraints:

• All of the movies shown have to be rated PG-13 or lower since I want this to be open to high-schoolers.
• I want to avoid the movies on the School Study Media list, because (like the page says) the creators usually didn't intend for people to study them academically.
• Ideally, I'd like to include some movies that are common fodder for pop-culture references.
• I also want to get a mix of classic and current movies, but there's going to be a bit more focus on "how can we use this today?"
• The class will be something like 7 or 8 weeks long, 4 days a week (and an optional class on Fridays), which means 27 to 32 movies total, plus the "Optional Friday" movies and a couple days for "general overview" stuff.

I'm slowly putting together a list of movies, and here's what I have so far (filled out) and what I need (with "???"):

• "History" unit:
  • Introduction / collection of pre-Hollywood and Silent films
  • Singin' in the Rain (Golden Age)
  • ??? (New Hollywood and Auteur Theory)
  • Jaws (Blockbuster Age)
• "Genre" unit, part 1:
  • ??? (Film Noir)
  • The Magnificent Seven (Western)
  • Back To The Future (Sci-Fi)
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Action / Pulp)
• "Genre" unit, part 2:
  • The Sixth Sense (Horror)
  • The Phantom of the Opera (Musicals)
  • An American Tail (Traditional Animation)
  • Toy Story (CGI Animation)
• "Genre" unit, part 3: [May be an optional week)
  • ??? (Romantic Comedies)
  • ??? (Indie Films)
  • ??? (War / Disaster Movies)
  • ??? (Fantasy)
• "Production" unit, part 1:
  • ??? (Writing)
  • ??? (Directing)
  • ??? (Acting)
  • ??? (Production Design)
• "Effects" unit:
  • Metropolis (early practical effects)
  • Ghostbusters (recent practical effects)
  • TRON: Legacy (general CGI)
  • Avatar or Rise of the Planet of the Apes (motion-capture)
• "Production" unit, part 2:
  • ??? (Cinematography)
  • ??? (Sound)
  • ??? (Music)
  • ???
• "Tying It All Together"
  • "What have we learned?" discussion
  • Jurassic Park
  • ???
  • The Fellowship of the Ring
• Bonus "Optional Friday" stuff:
  • ??? (History / foreign)
  • Batman Begins (Genre pt 1) (Superheroes)
  • Troll 2 (Genre pt 2) ("So Bad, It's Good" and B-Movies)
  • Class votes on a movie (Genre pt 3)
  • ??? (Production pt 1)
  • ??? (Effects)
  • ??? (Production pt 2)
  • A New Hope (Tying It All Together)

So with all that in mind, what are some other movies that could be worth looking into? I know my list leans pretty heavily toward Science Fiction, so what else could I add for diversity? What ground-breakers have I missed?

edited 10th May '15 6:32:42 PM by AwSamWeston

The Big Sleep for Film Noir, probably

(never saw it, but it's supposed to be the trope-godfather of the genre that later spoofs like The Big Lebowski drew off of)

For the Golden Age, I would say Singin In The Rain would be a solid choice since the movie is about the transition from the Silent Era to the Golden Era of Hollywood.

The Graduate was one of the movies that ushered in New Hollywood.

For Blockbusters, I would say that Jaws or even Star Wars would be a good choice since those two films codified the Blockbuster age.

I wouldn't pick Iron Giant for Animation...in fact, I wouldn't pick one movie for the theme because, well, there are different kinds of animation. But if you discuss an animated movie, it should be a true game-changer. Plus, "animation" is not really a genre, it is a film making technique. An animated movie can be everything, from a fairy tale to a psychological thriller.

If you are not that well-versed on animation, may I recommend this blog post of mine: https://swanpride3.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/the-history-of-western-animation-in-film/

It lists some of the most ground-breaking animated movies (not all of them because it's more about technical development) and might give you an idea how it developed in the western world.

If you tell me what you had in mind in relation to animation I can certainly recommend something fitting for you.

Oh, and I would pick "Singing in the Rain" for Musical...for one it is a way better movie than Phantom of the Opera and two it is actually a movie about making movies.

I am not sure if "The Sixth Sense" is the best example for Horror either...but then I would always lean towards the classics like "The Haunting" or "Psycho". In fact, Psycho is great to discuss when it comes to suspense...it's Hitchcock after all...but then I guess that puts it automatically on the list....

And for a foreign movie I highly recommend Fritz Lang's "M". It especially does a very good job creating an atmosphere of fear without ever showing something particularly violent (and the movie is about a children's killer).

edited 22nd Apr '15 8:37:24 AM by Swanpride

For production, and how things go wrong in the process and nearly kill the star, yet the final product still turns out glorious, I think these two would be ideal as an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmaker%27s_Apocalypse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now_Redux

A good movie about movie production that I'd recommend, funny enough, is the Ed Wood biopic.

edited 22nd Apr '15 11:11:47 AM by Lionheart0

I think that's rated R, though.

Something I've wanted to do if I were ever to teach a film class is an exercise where the students watch this masterpiece and try to find all the continuity errors in it.

What about A New Hope for the blockbuster age instead of Jaws?, or for one of the "tying it all together" movies? And I'd say Tron or Toy Story for general CGI.

edited 22nd Apr '15 4:04:00 PM by IFwanderer

Star Wars fan that i am, i think part of the benefit of a film class is to watch things people are unlikely to have seen. Part of the benefit of my film class in college was getting me to see "Singin' in the Rain," "Citizen Kane," and "Modern Times."

Gonna respond to ideas in bulk:

• I've batted around the idea of adding "Singin' In The Rain" somewhere, so I think I'll add it to that "Golden Age" slot. Partly because of that "movie about movies" detail.
• I also batted around the idea for Toy Story, and I know it's a big thing for CGI animation, but I wasn't sure if I had time for it, and I wanted to include Traditional animation in the mix. I'll probably just use two separate movies for animation: one for Traditional and one for Computer. Maybe I can shift those to the end of the second Genre week, as a lead-in to Production?
• I'm avoiding Star Wars because Episode 4 isn't representative of the rest of how the series plays out, and all the others either aren't good study material or need Ep.4 to understand.
• In the Effects week, "General CGI" is supposed to mean "using CGI as an effect." I'll note that in my original post.
• Apocalypse Now is R-rated, so I can't do that. Same for Heart of Darkness.
• Tron sounds like a good idea in theory, but its effects haven't aged well. If anything, I'd go with TRON: Legacy.
• Part of my reasoning behind The Sixth Sense is that it has one of the biggest spoilers out there. If someone hasn't seen it, it's a good idea to see it before it's spoiled.

Also, for Traditional Animation: I'd like to get something Non-Disney. Maybe from Don Bluth. I still have to consider the options there.

I'm glad people are helping out. Thanks!

edited 22nd Apr '15 6:07:55 PM by AwSamWeston

From Don Bluth, check no further than An American Tail. Or, alternatively, some Soviet animation stuff.

As for TRON, sure, its effects may have aged a bit badly, but it's useful if you want to use it as an example of primitive CGI.

edited 22nd Apr '15 9:40:20 PM by Quag15