Brief Discussion of How I Plan to Teach Film/Editing Techniques in my Classroom

Part of the mass media course I taught recently involved teaching students about logical fallacies and Jib Fowles’ fifteen basic appeals. I experienced some success in teaching students to understand and identify these tools as applied in advertising by immediately providing them with examples – print ads for the fifteen basic appeals, and video ads for the logical fallacies. Based off of this success, I would look to take a similar approach to teaching film editing techniques. This means I would have students review the terms, view some examples, then have a turn at identifying these tools for themselves. Naturally, all of this activity would be couched in a wider discussion of what these film editing techniques do for a film’s overarching meaning-making. The final step in my unit on film editing techniques would involve students actually applying what they have learned, either to a video or a storyboard of their making. One book I would consider using is Walter Dean Meyers' Monster, which makes extensive use of film terminology.