Projects archive

New Tools for Creative Interpretation - Films and Animations

This page compliments the project description page and presents the short films and animation sequences created by the participants on the project.

Project Summary

Teachers of English literature have often looked to new forms of activities to enhance the ways students can engage with a text, and critically interpret it. Although the standard approaches of close reading, contextual analyses, followed by presentation of argument usually in the form of an essay are tried and tested, and will undoubtedly form the mainstay of teaching literature for the foreseeable future, the new technologies are beginning to offer us other opportunities.

This study looked at two approaches:

1) the use of digital video to explore creative interpretations

2) the use of digital animation to explore creative interpretations

It aimed to see how useful film-making might be in a standard literature course, and in particular how it affected the students' critical analysis skills.

This was tied to the 3rd-year option taught at the Oxford English Faculty - 'Literature on Screen'.

The project was run by Dr Stuart D Lee, English Faculty and Learning Technologies Group, University of Oxford. It ran from October 2005 to May 2006.

Films

Digital Video

Digital Video courses were offered to give basic training on camerawaork and iMovie on the Apple Mac. Students were then allowed to choose a text from ProQuest's Literature Online services, and make a short film based on this. The results were:

Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll
D. Proctor, F. Hamilton, and H. Race

'Wine of the Fairies' - Shelley
J. Aylwin, and others

'Porphyria's Lover' - Browning
S. Williams, and others

Computer Animation

Students were training in the software MediaStage by Immersive Education. Special handouts were created to facilitate this training (Download the handout). Students were then given an afternoon, working by themselves, to create a film based on a previously chosen text. Students did not have access to audio facilities so the voices are restricted to computer generated ones. You can view the results through the English Subject Centre's mediaplayer (requires the flash plugin from Adobe).

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde - the interview scene with Jack and Lady Bracknell
C. Gardiner

Rabindranath Tagore - The Home and The World
O. Spottiswoode

Manfred - Byron
A. Johnson

The Europeans - Henry James
C. Smith

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
T. Viita

A Dialogue between Soul and Body - A. Marvell
C. Adams

Beowulf's Funeral
J. Beney

Dracula
M. Castle

Taming of the Shrew
J. Aylwin