Students will explore a variety of film texts, from documentaries to television shows and shorts to narrative films that originate from various cultural contexts, gaining an understanding of how film elements combine to communicate meaning to the viewer.

Students will research and respond to a variety of film texts using both primary and secondary sources, identifying how the film texts are constructed and how the choices of directors, cinematographers, and actors convey meaning through film elements.

Students will acquire and develop technical and critical film vocabulary to support their analysis of films.

Students will engage in discussions of film sequences and film texts through a variety of key film concepts.

Students will document their own interpretations of how meaning is constructed through film elements in film sequences and how these relate to the entire film texts from which they belong.

Students will analyze and deconstruct a variety of film sequences and full film texts, showing an awareness of the cultural contexts from which the film texts originate.

Students will consider and link film elements and cultural contexts within film texts they have studied, and films they have experienced.

Students will reflect on their analysis of film elements and film texts in both formal and informal presentations.

Students will experience presenting work as a written textual analysis, demonstrating a proficiency in using film vocabulary.

Cultural Context refers to the conditions that influence and are influenced by a film's culture of origin....

• Economic (for example, the economic classes and issues explored within a film’s narrative) 

• Geographical (for example, the geographical location of a film’s origin) 

• Historical (for example, the period in time in which a film was created) 

• Institutional (for example, the production, distribution and exhibition factors involved for a film) 

• Political (for example, a film that attempts to persuade, subvert or create a political effect) 

• Social (for example, the communities, identities or issues represented in a film) 

• Technological (for example, the tools, products and methods used to create a film) 

Film Elements factors that are broadly associated with film language, formalist film analysis, and vocabulary pertaining to the creation and reception of film texts.

• Cinematography (such as colour, composition, exposure, framing, focus scale, movement, shot type, and so on) 

• Critical response and reception 

• Editing (such as continuity, cut, dissolve, match, montage, pace, transition, and so on) 

• Filmmakers’ influences, intentions and vision 

• Genre, codes, and conventions 

• Mise-en-scène (such as acting and figure behaviour, art direction, costume and make up, décor, lighting, set and setting, space, and so on) 

• Motifs, symbols and themes 

• Narrative structure (Hero's Journey, Freytag's Pyramid) 

• Sound (such as dialogue, sound editing, sound effects and foley, soundtrack and music or score, diegetic and non-diegetic, and so on)