Classroom tactics
20 ideas for using the British Pathe Archive
presented in no particular order - to help get lesson planning started.
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Direct Response
Best and simplest - let the Archive speak for itself. The best way will always be simply responding to the subject, the images and the stories. Chosen because it fits with subject, high profile issues or local identity.
The archive is full things that bring out strong responses – images and sounds; faces staring back at you; people in action; the strange and the mundane; scenes from other lands and other times; your region as it was long ago. Little pieces of history; from the serious to the comic – from catastrophe to cats trophies.
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What happened next?
• What are these people doing?
• How can they eat, speak, breathe?
• What might happen to them?
• How old might they be now?
• Has the world changed?
Three questions that can be asked of every item in the archive, whether still or movie: What happened next? What happened before the film was taken? What is going on beyond the camera frame? Every image opens up its own world of fact and of imagining. Play part of a news item; stop and ask what happens next? before finsihing the clip. Show a still from the clip..ask for predictions before running the item.
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The Sound of Silence
Make your own soundtrack to a silent newsreel item.
Record a narration to film and then compare it to the original.
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Edit and be dammed
Start with a piece of film and carry on with your own footage. Present the shots of a film story as separate pieces - e.g. the Titanic story - and make up your own version... add an interview or two... add a narration...
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Telling tales the media way
The power of media story telling is about working the elements of visual and audio language. Playing images against or with sounds. Anchoring images with headlines or narration. Moving the frame and angle of the camera's view.
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Daisy chains
Each choose a film clip and pass it on. Attach a new shot...pass it on...and on round the group. Should end up with x films all different... use a soundtrack to help bind them. Like switching channles with the zapper..what world is exposed? See the exhibition at the NMPFT.
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Cross Cuts
Intercut an archive item with video shots you have taken about the same (or maybe a contrasting/different) subject. Or intercut two archive items.
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On the wall ... off the wall
Use a data projector to enlarge a film to people size on the wall... can you act with the figures? Stop the film and carry on the action. Use this technique to suport role play. A lot of theatre production is using film projection to extend the setting and the feeling. Record the children's role play and then edit that in and play that on the wall.
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Cache prizes
Working through the archive, choosing key items and storing them on the school network takes time. But time that will repay endlesly. Once there they can be accessed at any time and used alongside other materials.
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Stills that move
1 Use a series of stills to tell a story. Link them by a soundtrack.
2 Use a series of stills- every 5th frame from an action sequence - and create a short piece of animation.
Use the web to find out how film/video/television works and makes still images or bits of data appear to move when we watch them. Search for Edward Muybridge; zoetrope; birth of film; perception.
Lots of animation in the archive.
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Down these mean streets
The items in the archive are evidence of events recorded by camera. How do they stand up in court? Use clips to present the case for e.g. a national health service. Set up a tribunal.
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Themes
Select a theme; e.g Football (see the starter.) Choose some key items and cache them. Class investigates/dicusses them to set up parameters for searching the archive. Explore, analyse and present findings. Monkey glands anyone?
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Cool types
Use titling to create titles and intertitles...explore the power of words, typefaces and colours amongst the images and sounds. If editing allows title over images. Use headlines..descriptive text, quotes, poetry, statistics, etc... Where have you seen type used over images in film and television apart form the credits?
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Power(point) to the people
Scenario 1 Powerpoint...snore...bulletpoints...snore...
Scenario 2 Powerpoint... media clips...personalised presentation... interaction weith audience. Use the tools in powerpoint to help children present course work with the power of moving images and sound and as an interactive presentation with an audience.
And of course its not just powerpoint..any media enabled presentation s/ware will do.
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White boards
Use the white board software to save the clips. Children overlay words on images...deconstruct what's in a picture... set up conversation between two classes.
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Assemblies
Lots of material for use in assemblies.
Can someone who remembers seeing the Pathe News at the cinema come in and talk about about what it meant when the newsreels were the only real way to see the news. If they could choose a couple of clips they remember. Record their reminisences on video and add to the historical record.
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Be a V-jay.
Build up a CD full of image samples to project with a data projector to the music at the next form dance. Try a neat segue between the Andrews Sisters and Asain Dub Foundation. And yes, V or Video-jays do exist.
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Inter-School Collaboration
The Archive gives us all the chance to use a common resource that is available to 'all' schools.
Use the RBC broadband Network to find partners to work with:
If you have a story about a local disaster or housing or whatever...does anyone else have a story about the same subject in their locality?
Found a story from another locality that you want to find out more about?
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5 w's ~ What’s going on here?
• What?
• When?
• Where?
• Who?
• Why?
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Don't keep calling it Pathe!
Some consideration for when a brand name such as Pathe may become a barrier of over-familiarisation even when the actual content chosen would stand up and work well. Sometimes it is not necessary to refer to the material as "Pathe material" (it's on the film clips anyway) - keep the focus on the subject.
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A note on visual language.
The term 'visual language' was first used in schools in the 1960s in the context of Art & Design Education under the influence of movements such as the Bauhaus which had tried to respond to changes in the 20th century to society, industrial production and communication. The growth of "the media" (along with "multimedia" also new terms) after the Second World War encouraged some teachers to use film, photography, animation, audio, projection and video in an attempt to keep the tools available to children in schools relevant to their experience outside them.
The development of affordable digital tools for all of these areas of creative work in the past few years suddenly means that what was an aspiration has now become, not only possible, but esential for all schoolls, subjects and teachers to engage with and use embedded in their teaching and in pupil's learning. Digitisation has 're-democratised' communication for pupils in the UK....it is increasingly important that children are given the opportunitiy to speak 'media' as well as being a consumer of it. The challenge for teachers is to embed it in learning and begin to recognise the needs of progression in its use and to draw on the sophistication of expression in the use of visual language that we commonly associate with spoken and written language. The ability to use all forms of communication to engage issues and take life-decisions will detremine the future that our childen will experience.
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Copyright - Copyleft
Pathe Resources
Starters
