Australian Screen Education articles from September 2004

Australian Screen Education archives from September 2004

Editorial.
September 22, 2004... This issue heralds a new name for the magazine; we are now known as Screen Education, a change that is not solely cosmetic, but reflects an increasing awareness of the global nature of media and film, the need for an exchange of ideas and...

Screen education events.(Calendar)
September 22, 2004... WE ARE ON THE HOME STRETCH IN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. It is competition entry time for Media and Arts students. Competitions and festivals provide a way for students to get their work 'out there' and the exhibition of these works inspires the...

The dynamic cinematic heritage of Japan: from classic live-action to contemporary animation.(1 Japan)(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD, Japanese cinema is best known for classic samurai movies and contemporary animated features. Before the current anime boom, the only Japanese films that received wide circulation were those made by Kurosawa,...

The Corporation.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2004... 'We wanted to alienate people from the normalcy of corporate culture and to try to encourage a kind of critical distance, so that people can see the corporate waters we're all swimming in... because we're lost in it. And there are aspects of...

Looking at life in a different light: the branding of Australia: during the early 1970s, at a time when Australia House in London's The Strand was pushing Brits to distant shores for ten pounds, you'd think the Australian Embassy in Paris would have had some decent persuasive literature. They didn't.
September 22, 2004... They were handing out leaflets on mastitis in cows. With a shrug of the shoulders they said it was 'better than nothing'. From a marketing perspective in the early twenty-first century, it's hard to imagine such a lack of control over the...

Fahrenheit 9/11: powerful expose or pulp fiction?(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... 'While Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression.' (1) ...

Newspaper and reader: the post-war relationship.(Iraq war)
September 22, 2004... This war was--is--an incredibly challenging experience for media practitioners and media consumers alike. For the first time, we and they had ready access to both sets of propaganda and the full spectrum of opinion on the war, its meaning, and...

Oxymoron or anti-oxidant? I do not hold myself up as a media commentator or an expert. This article is written as a critical consumer, a citizen and an educator.(Media Ethics)
September 22, 2004... THE QUESTION THAT I WANT TO pose at the start is the following: What sort of journalism do I respect? Here is what I came up with, punctuated and supported by examples of ethical journalism that have touched me in profound ways. Before...

Getting our measure: inside the Australian TV ratings system.
September 22, 2004... On the last day of the 2003-04 financial year, Nine Network news and current affairs director, Jim Rudder, lost his job. While a statement released by the fallen news and current affairs chief cited 'personal reasons' for the decision to...

A dangerous thing: the debate over TV violence.
September 22, 2004... The hunt for witches to explain society's ills is ancient in our blood, but unholy for that nonetheless. The difference is that now we do not blame the village hag and her black cat but the writer, the photographer and filmmaker. Increasingly...

Do reality shows teach us anything?
September 22, 2004... MY WIFE AND I WERE RECENTLY IMPRESSED by the ability of our friends' eleven-year-old son to bring the drama of reality TV to life in his parents' living room. His performance repertoire ranged from his heartfelt description of his friend's...

'Whale Rider' study guide.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... Introduction This study guide has been written for students in years five to eight, ages ten to fourteen. (Parental consent can be sought for primary age children when a film is rated PG.) The guide links the film study to outcomes in the...

Analysing a children's television phenomenon: using Hi5 as a teaching resource.
September 22, 2004... Hi5 is a popular with young children: not only is there the television program, but there are also the related merchandising items and promotional activities. Merchandising items include videos of the program, books, games, jigsaw puzzles and...

'Shrek': a study guide.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... About the Film Background The film version of Shrek is based on William Steig's book of the same name. It came to the attention of Producer John H. Williams when he was reading with his two young children. He says: 'Even as an adult I...

Get animated: capturing interest in the primary classroom.
September 22, 2004... If you are looking for a way to keep difficult students on a task, read on. My decision to create an animated film set in motion the most engaging series of activities I have ever placed before students. So what is it that students do? ...

Multimedia showcase.
September 22, 2004... Young learners live in a multimodal community, where hybrid texts abound. In order to participate in this multimodal, globalized world, students may want to learn how to access and decode everyday literacies as they make meaning of the world...

'Noah & Saskia': who do you want to be?(young adult drama series)
September 22, 2004... SOMETIMES BY BEING SOMEONE ELSE YOU FIND OUT WHO YOU REALLY ARE... Noah and Saskia is the story of two teenagers who change each other's lives from opposite sides of the world. By representing their ideal selves in a virtual world, they...

Multimedia strikes back.(POP FICTION)
September 22, 2004... 'Literature by its very nature is committed to questioning yesterday's assumptions and today's commonplaces.' Robert Martin Adams, 1977 (1) It is true that the main purpose of literature, whatever the medium, is to present questions to the...

Success in VCE media.(Victorian Certificate of Education )
September 22, 2004... Once upon a time, a professor brought into class a large empty glass. Into the glass he placed some big rocks, filling it to the top. The students observing were then asked to raise their hands if they believed the cup to be full. A dozen...

2003 VCE Premier's awards in Media.(Victorian Certificate of Education, Kathryn Shiels, Danielle Trotter, Christina Cox)(Interview)
September 22, 2004... Kathryn Shiels Why did you choose Media? I chose to study Media for my VCE studies because I have always had a high interest and passion for black and white photography--which is the medium my school used for this subject. Ever since I...

Heinemann Media book 1 and 2: media teachers across the country will be pleased to know that Heinemann has just released two media books.
September 22, 2004... These books were written to support the new 2005 VCAA Media Studies curriculum. Heinemann Media 1 is written for VCE Media Units 1 and 2, and Heinemann Media 2 is for Units 3 and 4, but chapters are also relevant to senior Media courses across...

Dear America: letters home from Vietnam.
September 22, 2004... I remember a Captain, an aviator, observing a group of grunts toasting the inventory in a bar said: 'You damned inventory think you're the only people who exist'. You're damned right we do. (1) The prologue to Dear America: Letters Home...

Historicity and gender politics in The Winslow Boy.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... The Winslow Boy is David Mamet's sixth film as a director. Mamet's most distinguished theatrical texts, American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, convey the now familiar criticism of American business ethics, epitomized by the...

Juggling cultures in Bend It Like Beckham.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... Jesminder Bhamra (Parminder Nagra), or Jess, is the main protagonist of Bend it Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha, 2002). She is an eighteen-year-old living in London who finds herself standing at a complicated crossroad in her life. She has...

'The business of living': Secrets & Lies.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... Mike Leigh left school in 1960 to begin a career on the stage, moving to London to take up an acting scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Although he also studied at the London Film School, the Central School of Arts and Crafts...

Frankenstein: symbol and parable.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... I see Frankenstein as an intensely sane person, at times rather fanatical... [yet] Frankenstein's nerves are all to pieces. He is a very strong, extremely dominant personality, sometimes quite strange and queer, sometimes very soft sympathetic...

Revenge, honour and betrayal in High Noon.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) is justifiably acknowledged as one of the great westerns. Other notable westerns of the period include Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948), Shane (George Stevens, 1953), and The Searchers (John Ford, 1956). High Noon...

Rabbit-Proof Fence: the journey of feeling.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... 'A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.' (Lao-tze) When Christopher Doyle's camera glides, like the totemic wedge-tailed eagle, across the landscape in Rabbit-Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2001), our eyes undertake a...

Teaching Contact.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2004... Introduction and Curriculum Context: The Journey The film, Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997), is recommended for study by HSC students, English Stage 6, and this article is intended to assist teachers of that curriculum in their teaching of...

To Kill a Mockingbird: seeing the film through the lens of film language and media literacy.
September 22, 2004... An American media educator seeks to help teachers better teach the film with his film study guide, in an exclusive four part series in Screen Education. Introduction Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (TKAM) is undoubtedly one of the...

2004 ATOM Awards.(Australian Teachers of Media)
September 22, 2004... FOR TWO DECADES the Australian Teachers of Media, ATOM, has been honoring excellence in film, television and multimedia. Held annually, the ATOM Awards recognize excellence in more than twenty-five categories. This year's awards drew entries...

Bold vision, fresh thinking.
September 22, 2004... Jeff Bird attended the 2004 convention of the US Broadcast Education Association (BEA) for Screen Education, and provides us with a glimpse of what's going on in the United States in broadcast education. From student TV to news reports of the...

Screentech.(media equipment, supllies, software)
September 22, 2004... The digital media, broadcast and film industries are sitting back about now, bellies overstuffed, groaning about indigestion and generally trying to recover from the gorge fest that was the NAB conference in Las Vegas in June. All those...

Sony Screenblast Movie Studio.(Technical section)(Product/Service Evaluation)
September 22, 2004... The use of computers in the school environment has grown dramatically in the past five years. Not just in terms of the number of computers available to students in classrooms (although there are still many government schools with a distinct...

Cressida Cowell: How to Train Your Dragon.
September 22, 2004... How to Train Your Dragon is a lighthearted fantasy aimed at older primary school aged readers. It is centred on the heir-apparent of a tribe of Vikings and his cheeky pet dragon, and attempts to tap into the current trend in children's...

Irini Savvides: Sky Legs.(Young Adult Review)(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... 'Once when I was five and I wasn't sure if I was speaking Greek, Spanish or English, I did say I wished I was one thing. Mum just laughed and said I was one thing. A human.' Sky Legs tells the story of Eleni, a feisty sixteen-year old...

David Evans: Opening a Fuzzwollop's Frame of Mind.
September 22, 2004... The idiosyncratic characters that inhabit the closed room which is the milieu of Daniel Evans' satirical play, Opening a Fuzzwollop's Frame of Mind, have reinterpreted intelligence, behaviour and purpose to harmoniously agree with their warped...

Andrew Blake: J. R. R. Tolkien--A Beginner's Guide.(Book Review)
September 22, 2004... In an era of fluff and puff, often the best novels are those that are substantive and thus necessitate some mental effort in reading them; novels by such authors as Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Geoffrey Chaucer, Angela Carter, Fyodor Dos...

Body Whys: CD-ROM.(Johnson and Johnson)(Product/Service Evaluation)
September 22, 2004... Johnson & Johnson, long associated with toiletry and baby products, have extended their range of consumables with the addition of a CD-ROM, The multimedia CD, titled Body Whys, is a helpful and informative tool kit for adolescents entering or...

Get your shorts up, you can make films: Melbourne Short Films on DVD, Melbourne, 2002.(Video Recording Review)
September 22, 2004... Produced and Authored by Peta Masters, Production Design by Nicki Johnson, Sound Design by Leah Baker, Usher: Chris Richey The DVD is relatively simple to navigate and the user is introduced to three main sections in the opening menu:...

Views From Beyond the Mirror: the films of Jane Campion.
September 22, 2004... Views From Beyond the Mirror is the first book of its kind to be published on the remarkable cinematic achievement of New Zealand born director, Jane Campion. Through detailed and beautifully written analyses of individual Jane Campion films,...