Australian Screen Education articles from June 2005

Australian Screen Education archives from June 2005

Events.
June 22, 2005... CINE SPARKS 27 July-8 Aug 2005, Brisbane THE AUSTRALIAN FILM FESTIVAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE * http://www.pa.ash.org.au/atomqld/BIFF1.htm The 14th Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF) is delighted to announce a major expansion of...

4 New Zealand: Aotearoa/New Zealand.(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
June 22, 2005... This is the fourth feature in Screen Education's series on national cinemas around the world, their history and contemporary production. We want to show their significance for world cinema, and extend teachers' and students' awareness of the...

Hotel Rwanda's moral compass: the film 'Hotel Rwanda' (Terry George, 2004) has reached the public at a time when, eleven years after the event, the Rwandan genocide has never been more topical.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2005... More and more is coming to light about how the world stood by and watched while people were slaughtered right in front of the noses of UN peacekeepers. Critics of the UN point to the institution's failure to prevent the genocide, and compare it...

Drawing the movies: an interview with a storyboard artist: who helped Cameron Crowe to visualize how he'd shoot the scenes for his latest movie 'Elizabethtown'? Neil Paddison speaks to Alex Hillkurtz, the storyboard artist behind Crowe's latest film.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... WITH TEN YEARS experience as a storyboard artist, working on movies as diverse as Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky and Lost in Space, Alex Hillkurtz is the ideal person to answer questions about what must be one of the most enviable jobs in the film...

The life fantasy and cinema: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
June 22, 2005... There is a moment early on in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001) which seems almost insignificant in the overall immensity of the trilogy, but which I think is the moment when we understand what is at stake...

Museum as media-form: constructing context, deconstructing the museum space.
June 22, 2005... Of the same mould THE MAKING OF MEDIA AND the curating of a museum exhibition are two endeavours that come from the same mould. Distilled, both can be described as interpretive constructions for the communication of collective ideas. Both...

Squeeze the lemon.(Masterclass! short film workshops )
June 22, 2005... Masterclass! Short Film Workshops with UK writer/director/actor/educator SIMON VAN DER BORGH and US short film guru KIM ADELMAN SIMON VAN DER BORGH opens, in his stentorian voice, with a story about his own acting teacher, a gay Jewish...

'The Banker' the BAFTA and Sting: want to raise some film funding? Sing for it! That's what Hattie Dalton did.
June 22, 2005... SHE SANG 'I Dived Into the Shallow End of the Gene Pool' from her short film, The Banker (2004) to film producer Trudie Styler (wife of English pop singer Sting), who 'was so impressed by the pitch', she wrote a cheque for funding straight away...

A short course in education: short courses can be a filmmaker's secret weapon, but you have to do our homework.(Victorian College Of The Arts )
June 22, 2005... Short courses offer people the opportunity to taste new worlds, put their toes in the water and learn new skills before making career and life changing decisions. For many in the film industry they also allow specific skills to be honed in a...

Filmmaking across the curriculum: Part Two.(A begginer's guide)
June 22, 2005... Pre-production (B) and Shoot * Planning, crew roles and production schedules * Technical preparation--camera, lighting and sound * The Shoot--tips for filming live action and animation With a simple guide to production, some...

Visual literacy in the primary classroom: talking out the text.
June 22, 2005... Abstract Current approaches to literacy acknowledge the importance of social purpose in text construction. To enable an informed approach to written texts, teachers make use of a scope and sequence of grammatical terms that allow us to...

'Golden Pennies': a primary years study guide.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2005... Introduction Golden Pennies (Oscar Whit r bread, 1985) is an excellent re-creation of life on the Victorian goldfields in 1854. Children thoroughly enjoy this series, probably because the children in the story control a great deal of the...

'Shrek 2': beyond the screen.
June 22, 2005... Introducing 'Shrek 2': about the film In Shrek, the gruesome green ogre, Shrek (Mike Myers) and his sidekick Donkey (Eddie Murphy) rescue Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the keep of a fire-breathing dragon. Shrek 2 follows on from the...

Shrek 2: the honeymoon is over.
June 22, 2005... About this study guide This study guide provides information and ideas for teachers to use with primary and lower secondary students to enhance their familiarity with and appreciation of the plot, characters, setting and key themes of...

Reality television: popcorn for the hungry: this unit of work was developed after watching the television backlash to the infamous 'Merlin incident' that occurred on Big Brother 2004.(MIDDLE YEARS SECTION)
June 22, 2005... For those who are not familiar with this highlight of reality television, Merlin a contestant on Big Brother, was evicted and walked out of the house with stuck on his chest that read 'free th [sic] refugees'. In addition, Merlin had stuck...

What's on after 'The Saddle Club'? Teen television culture in Australia: There is a seemingly unshakeable connection between teenagers and television, and, for better or worse, television plays a significant role in their lives.(MIDDLE YEARS SECTION)
June 22, 2005... Like most issues involving teenagers, the topic of 'teen TV' is complex, contradictory and often controversial. Does 'teen TV' simply refer to shows featuring teenage characters and actors, or to shows targeting teenage audiences, or both? The...

Taming TV: the four women and one young heroine at the centre of 'Holly's Heroes'.(Jenni Tosi )(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Holly's Heroes is a twenty-six part live action children's series that is currently being broadcast on the Nine Network. The series traces a year in the life of basketball-loving, 14-year-old heroine Holly McKenzie. It celebrates the importance...

Death: the new pornography: what happened? How did death suddenly become so 'in'? In a world where sex and nudity on screen no longer shock us, it seems we have a new four-letter word--dead.
June 22, 2005... 'One of the few good things about modern tiems; If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.' (Kurt Vonnegut, 'Cold Turkey', In These Times, May 10, 2004) IN LIFE, AT LEAST, DEATH IS...

10 tools for 'reading' television news.
June 22, 2005... Introduction The genre of television news occupies a unique space in our socio-cultural landscape. Yet unlike other genres such as soap opera, Crime drama, and reality TV, very little reflecting is done on the constructed nature of...

Read all about it: how news and views combine in print to present an issue: news is everywhere. It is the things we think, say and do, and the events that happen around us and to us. And it is the role of the news media to bring details of these significant happenings to the attention of the wider community.
June 22, 2005... Usually, a news story is written, read, and then made redundant by the events of the following day. But occasionally, a story seems to take on a life of its own. It provokes such a strong community reaction that it becomes the subject of...

Your TV is lying to you: the principles of visual 'truth' in media production: reality TV may dominate the broadcast channels of late, and documentaries may rake in more dollars at the box office than the latest Hollywood comic book remake, but make no mistake: your TV is lying to you!
June 22, 2005... Frightening enough as this idea may be, you should also strap yourself in for a second disturbing truth: this is not a new development--your TV has always lied to you. There isn't now, nor has there ever been, any such thing as 'reality' in...

Dude, where's my training?: the education of media teachers: earlier this year when I initially discussed this article with the Editor, I had, I thought, a not unrealistic vision of being able to place before you a comprehensive but manageable overview of the state of Media teacher training nationally.
June 22, 2005... As part of my role as a teacher educator I regularly visit schools, usually to assess the performance of trainee teachers of Media as they complete their teaching practicum. This, together with my other roles as a practising Media teacher,...

Introducing ... the film narrative.(FILM AS TEXT)
June 22, 2005... When teaching film as text, high school educators encounter one of the most persistent paradoxes in the Australian secondary classroom. In spite of their undeniable interest in and familiarity with the areas of film and television, secondary...

'It's the way things are': Once Were Warriors.(FILM AS TEXT)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2005... Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994) is a social problem film in realist style, which deals with or touches on a surprisingly large number of social issues: drug-usage, alcoholism, poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, social class...

'Touching the Void'.(FILM AS TEXT)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2005... Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003) has become the most successful documentary in British cinematic history, having won the 2004 British Academy Film Award for Outstanding British Film of the Year, been shortlisted for Best Documentary at...

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and the US election: a case of missed opportunity?(FILM AS TEXT)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2005... Michael Moore's most recent film, the massively successful Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), is a savage and sustained attack on George W. Bush and his decision to go to war in Iraq. Moore made it clear from the beginning that Fahrenheit 9/11 was an...

'To Kill a Mockingbird': seeing the film through the lens of film language and media literacy.(FILM AS TEXT)
June 22, 2005... PART 4 An American media educator seeks to help teachers in the US better teach the film with his film study guide online and in an exclusive four part series in Screen Education. In this final installment, he examines the critical job of...

Smoking guns and smouldering lips: 'The Big Sleep'.(FILM AS TEXT)
June 22, 2005... Raymond Chandler, author of the 1939 novel The Big Sleep, claimed that his contemporary, Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon) had taken murder out of the vicar's rose garden and given it 'back to the kind of people who commit it for...