Lesson Title: Screenplay as Literature
Objectives: Students will see how literature expands past books. Students will see how a story is created through a modern visual medium, as opposed to theatre like Shakespeare.
Anticipatory Set: I will show students a scene from the film, There Will Be Blood, in order for them to get a feeling for the story and make them excited to engage them in the screenplay.
Objective/Purpose: You will see why movies can be included as literature, and how the stories that we all love shown through the medium of cinema use the same tools as any other form of literature. Storytelling is a method to express themes, and that movies do this as does any other form of literature.
Input: Students must know what a screenplay is. I will provide an explanation of a screenplay and project some examples in order to familiarize them with the structure and necessary elements (Dialogue, blocking, cinematography). Students must also have a concept of voice and tone in writing, and tools of plot and characterization to contribute to a theme, which I will have gone over the day before.
Model: Each student will be provided with a copy of the screenplay of There Will Be Blood. I will read the first few pages of the screenplay with them so that they may get an idea of the text structure and how it translates onto film.
Check for Understanding: I will then have students volunteer to read as the different characters and I will read the various descriptions of blocking and cinematography.
Guided Practice: Students will then read along with a scene as I play that scene of the movie. We will then discuss how the writing translated on screen and to what extent they saw what was on the page affects what is on screen. Leading questions: How does the meaning of the dialogue change after an actor has interpreted it? Do you feel the voice you felt in the writing is reflected in the actors’ performances? Tone?
Closure: I will ask students to discuss what themes they felt from reading the page vs watching the film. We will discuss as a class what tools that the writer used to create the themes on page and what role a director has in translating those themes to the screen.
Independent Practice: I will have students write their own short scene in the form of a screenplay. I will ask them to write three adjectives for the both the voice and tone they intend to write with, and to make sure to include characterization in either their dialogue or cinematography.
Assessment: Students will share their scenes and explain how and why they wrote it the way they did in order to portray a specific theme.