Film and Television in Education The Falmer Press Library on Aesthetic Education Series Editor: Dr Peter Abbs, University of Sussex, Brighton The aim of the series is to define and defend a comprehensive aesthetic, both theoretical and practical for the teaching of the arts. The first three volumes provide a broad historic and philosophical framework for the understanding of the arts in education. The subsequent volumes elaborate the implications of this comprehensive aesthetic for each of the six major art disciplines and for the teaching of the arts in the primary school. Setting the Frame LIVING POWERS: A IS FOR AESTHETIC: The Arts in Education Essays on Creative and Aesthetic Education Edited by Peter Abbs (1987) Peter Abbs (1988) THE SYMBOLIC ORDER: A Contemporary Reader on the Arts Debate Edited by Peter Abbs (1989) The Individual Studies FILM AND TELEVISION IN EDUCATION: LITERATURE AND EDUCATION: An Aesthetic Approach to the Moving Image Encounter and Experience Robert Watson Edwin Webb DANCE AS EDUCATION: THE VISUAL ARTS IN EDUCATION Towards a National Dance Culture Rod Taylor Peter Brinson THE ARTS IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL MUSIC EDUCATION IN THEORY Glennis Andrews and Rod Taylor AND PRACTICE Charles Plummeridge EDUCATION IN DRAMA: Casting the Dramatic Curriculum David Hornbrook Work of Reference KEY CONCEPTS: A Guide to Aesthetics, Criticism and the Arts in Education Trevor Pateman Film and Television in Education: An Aesthetic Approach to the Moving Image Robert Watson The Falmer Press (A member of the Taylor & Francis Group) London • New York (cid:127) Philadelphia UK The Falmer Press, Rankine Road, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG24 0PR USA The Falmer Press, Taylor & Francis Inc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © Robert Watson 1990 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publisher. First published 1990 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Watson, Robert Film and television in education: an aesthetic approach to the moving image.—(Falmer Press library on aesthetic education). 1. Educational institutions. Curriculum subjects: Media studies I. Title 372.8 ISBN 0-203-21487-0 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27135-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 1-85000-714-4 (Print Edition) ISBN 1-85000-715-2 pbk Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Watson, Robert, 1947– Film and television in education: an aesthetic approach to the moving image/Robert Watson. p. cm.—(The Falmer Press library on aesthetic education) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-85000-714-4: ISBN 1-85000-715-2 (pbk.): 1. Motion pictures in education—Great Britain. 2. Television in education—Great Britain. I. Title. II. Series. LB1044.W36 1990 371.3′ 35–dc20 Jacket design by Benedict Evans Contents List of Figures vi Acknowledgments vii Series Editor’s Preface ix Chapter 1 Education: The Legacy of the 1960s 1 Chapter 2 The Beginning of Film 11 Chapter 3 Conventional Narrative Sequence 17 Chapter 4 From Snapshots to the Long Take 43 Chapter 5 Language, Genres and Television 95 Chapter 6 Film in the Narrative Arts 131 Bibliography 151 Index 169 v List of Figures Figure 3.1: A man being pursued by a car? 20 Figure 3.2.i: Camera positions—the visual impact of the close-up. 23 Figure 3.2.ii: Reading the frames—the importance of camera-to-subject position. 24 Frames 2.3 and 2.4: Camera position near the ground with its ‘eyeline’ level with the subject. 25 Frames 2.5 and 2.7: Low angle and high angle camera positions. 26 Figure 3.3: Aerial view of a man and woman, with four possible camera positions and the close-ups they would frame. 31 Figure 3.4: Shot/reverse shot patterns. 33 Figure 3.5: Repetitious use of the shot/reverse shot pattern. 35 Figure 3.6: The over-the-shoulder shot. 36 Figure 3.7: The symmetrical pattern of a sequence of shots. 37 Figure 3.8: Camera position 5—duplicating the woman’s point of view. 37 Figure 5:1 A simplified plan of the Fawlty Towers’ stage set. 124 Figure 5.2: A simplified plan of the Fawlty Towers’ dining room set. 125 vi Acknowledgments At The London School of Film Technique (The London International Film School), I received a vocational training which I have come to regard, over the last twenty years, as a model of disciplined creativity in education. My sense of the underlying significance of basic film conventions has evolved and been strengthened through a decade of teaching in comprehensive schools and, since 1986, my work at Bretton Hall. I should like to thank Carol Lorac for commenting so usefully on early versions of several chapters, and Dr Peter Abbs for involving me in this project initially, and inviting me to address open seminars at Sussex University. The questions and discussion following these talks helped to determine the areas explored in this book. Robert Watson Bretton Hall College January 1990 vii Preface There can be little doubt that of the six great arts which the Library of Aesthetic Education is committed to defending and defining, film has been the most ignored in the curriculum of our schools. There is a grand irony in this for film is not only the one unique art form developed in our own century but also the most unequivocally popular. As Robert Watson shows in the first chapter of this book, it is symptomatic of the condition of film in education that most of the limited attempts to include it have failed to grasp its artistic nature and its expressive possibilities. For example, among the first serious attempts to include film in education must be listed F.R.Leavis’ and Denys Thompson’s Culture and Environment (1933); but, in that once highly influential book, film was virtually equated with cultural pathology whose dire influences had to be critically resisted at all costs. Subsequent initiatives, influenced by the Newsom Report (1963) were generally more positive in recommending film in the classroom but essentially as a kind of dramatic stimulus for discussion, or as illustrative material for project work; in other words, not as a profound art form requiring aesthetic response and creative engagement. Under more recent developments in Media Studies, film (along with television and video) continued to secure some space in the curriculum but, once again, the aims have been primarily ideological and discursive. Film was envisaged as part of a system of communications which had to be decoded in terms of ideology and contextualized in terms of power and control. The analysis may have had much to recommend it—we need to know who owns what and why, just as we need to be able to read the hidden messages of advertising—but, at the same time, the approach missed entirely the crucial aesthetic element, erased the difference between propaganda and art and failed to see the liberating creative powers of the camera when put in the hands of the learner. Robert Watson’s Film and Television in Education with its telling subtitle An Aesthetic Approach to the Moving Image sets out to remedy the neglect. It does so in a number of closely related ways. First of all, the book advocates a highly practical aesthetic for the teaching of ix