Thinking About Media: Teacher Material
Remind students of the discussion from earlier about which characters were generally seen as being likeable, and which were seen as being unlikeable.
Now ask them to explain what makes these characters likeable or unlikeable other than things they say or do.
- If they are an animated character, how does the character design make them likeable or unlikeable?
- If they are a live action character, what is the effect of the casting, costuming and makeup (hair, etc.)?
Sentence starter: I like … because they look …
Now ask about how the character is filmed:
- Do they get a lot of time onscreen?
- Do we often see things from their point of view (as though we were looking through their eyes) or watch them doing something interesting?
- Are they often filmed in close-up (which makes us feel like we know them)?
All of these things can make a character more sympathetic.
If we often see them in extreme close up or long shots, or if we see them from another character’s point of view, we will be less sympathetic to them.
- Camera angles (high or low shots) can work both ways: a low angle might make a character feel heroic or dangerous, and a high angle might make us feel that a character is weak and not worth our attention, or that they are helpless and need us to protect them.
Project or have students access the Image Slider in the student chapter Likeable and Unlikeable Characters: Film Techniques and ask students how you can tell, without knowing anything about either movie, that the first character is likable and the second is unlikeable.
If you have already delivered the lessons Camera Angle and Colour a Picture, remind students of the ideas you discussed in those.
Make sure the following points come up in the conversation:
Light and colour: The first shot has a slightly hazy light and gentle, soothing colours. The light on the character’s face and clothes is soft, so that he almost blends in with the background colours. The second shot has very strong, harsh light on the character’s face, which makes it pop out against the blurry background (especially with the reflective frames of her glasses). The colours on her face and glasses contrast strongly with the background.
Camera angle: The first shot is a medium close-up, which lets us see his whole face. It’s a very slight high angle, which makes him feel unthreatening, and his eyes are at around our eye level which makes him feel trustworthy. The shot has a lot of empty space on the left side of the frame, which makes us feel like the character is giving us space, and his eyeline is at the character whose should we see to far left. He has a mild, open expression, as though he is listening sympathetically to something we’re saying.
- The extreme close up, with the top and bottom of her face out of frame, along with the extreme expression on her face, makes her seem almost grotesque. This is emphasized by the low angle, which places her nostrils at her eye level so that we are practically looking up her nose and open mouth. She fills the centre of the frame and her eyeline is towards us, which feels aggressive and disturbing. If something bad happened to her, we wouldn’t be too upset.