Film And Television In Education: An Aesthetic Approach To The Moving Image (Falmer Press Library on Aesthetic Education)

193 Pages·1990·0.9 MB·English

by  Robert Watson B

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