Overview One of the most powerful voices in modern culture is that of film. It is an international medium, but unlike the play or the novel, it is one in which this country has played a decisive role from its beginnings a century ago to the present time. Like the drama, film uses spoken language, but films have never been merely recordings of plays. They are a medium to which speech, music, and sound effects all contribute, but the medium is primarily visual.
Film often comes close to achieving that.
To achieve this, we propose studying one film as a sort of laboratory example of how the apparatus works to achieve its effects. Studying such a film will be the occasion for students to learn how the apparatus works. That is, students working in small groups, perhaps, will either demonstrate how one might film a scene of their own choosing, or they will use the same technique to analyze a scene from a film, a television commercial or any other appropriate text. Another very useful possibility for this part of the unit would be a film by Orson Welles, especially his version of Othello , which is very definitely a film based on Shakespeare rather than a recording of a stage performance. Even if not studied in depth, this film would make an excellent transition from a drama unit based on Othello .