Lesson video

Hello, is Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to this English unit.

Today's learning objective is to analyse, a visual film clip.

We're going to be watching the next section, of Whale Rider, which is the climax.

We're going to be focusing on the setting, the sounds, the colours and the characters, in preparation for writing our own climax, in a few lessons time.

Let's get started.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book, or some lines paper, a pen or pencil to write with, and a ruler or a straight edge.

If you haven't got any of those things with you right now, just pause the recording, and go and get them.

Hopefully you are all ready for today's learning now.

We're going to start by looking at, the Whale Rider narrative climax, and watching the clip together.

We're then going to focus in, on different aspects of the clip.

We're going to start by looking at the setting, the sounds and the colours.

Then we're going to move on to focus on the characters.

We'll finish today's lesson with your independent task.

We've already watched, a couple of clips from Whale Rider in this unit, and we've written our own narrative build up.

Can you pause the recording, and tell me anything that you have learned, about the film Whale Rider so far? Off you go.

Let's have a look at the story staircase, and remind ourselves what happens in Whale Rider.

In the opening, a girl was born and named Paikea.

Her brother and mother died, and the baby's father moved away, and the girl grew up with her grandparents.

In the buildup, this is the part that we've already written together.

Koro that's Paikea's grandfather, decide to find the next chief.

He starts the club to teach the first-born boys, to be leaders.

Paikea was desperate for her grandfather, to see that she could be chief.

Koro wouldn't let her join in, because she was a girl.

Today, we're going to be focusing on the climax.

That's this section here.

One night, some whales beached themselves, on a local beach.

Beached themselves means, they got stuck on the beach, and they couldn't get off.

All the villagers tried to save the whales.

The whales started to die.

The villagers were upset and devastated.

Lastly is the resolution.

We'll be writing this later on in the units.

Paikea climbed onto the largest whales back.

She encouraged it back into the water.

All the other whales followed, and swam away to safety.

Before we write, any kind of text type is really important, that we understand the purpose.

What is the purpose of a narrative climax? What features must include, and why is it important that we have a climax, within our story staircase? Pause the recording, and try and answer that question now.

Well done for persevering and giving that a go.

That was a really tricky question.

I even struggled to answer it.

Let's have a look at what I thought of.

I thought the purpose is often the highest point of tension or drama.

So it's often the most tense, or the most dramatic section of a story.

The conflict, problem or action, reaches its peak? And sometimes it's the turning point in the story.

We mentioned previously in the build-up, that sometimes a problem is introduced.

So sometimes, the climax resolves that problem, or the problem changes in the climax.

Did you have anything similar, or maybe you had something different? We're now going to watch this clip of Whale Rider.

This is the climax is the part of the story, where all of those whales beached themselves on the beach.

That means they get stuck on the beach, and they can't get back into the water.

Before we watch the clip, I just want you to make you to make you aware, that sadly a whale does die, in this section of the film.

If you think that that's something that might upset you, please make sure you go and get to parents or carer, to support you if you're going to watch this clip.

Once we've watched this clip, I'm going to ask you to re-tell the events, using the images on the screen.

Make sure you're completely focused, so you're going to be able to do, that in a few minutes time, right, let's watch.

They were dying.

He died.

Hopefully you didn't find that clip too upsetting.

Right, can you now re-tell the events? I have put some pictures in the correct order, but I want you to say, one sentence per picture, to re-tell the story, that you've just watched.

Pause the recording, and give it a go now.

Before we start to analyse our film clip, I want to think about this idea of atmosphere.

Let's just make sure we're really clear, on what that word means.

Repeat after me, atmosphere, atmosphere.

Atmosphere is a noun.

It means the main tone or mood, of a place, situation, or piece of creative work.

In this context, we're thinking about the atmosphere of the film clip.

And then we might think about the atmosphere, that you create in your piece of writing.

Synonyms could be tone, mood or feeling, and in a sentence, we could use it like this.

The author created a spooky atmosphere, and their description of the forest.

What is the atmosphere of the climax, do you think? What's the tone or mood or feeling, that the director and the actors create? Pause the recording, and try and answer that question now.

I think the atmosphere in the climax, is generally quite a negative atmosphere.

Everyone's feeling really, really sad and desperate.

We might even describe it as a sombre atmosphere, that describes something that's got deep sadness, because those whales are dying.

People are feeling really, really sad.

So we need to think about, how we're describing this scene, and the language we're using in our climax, to try and create that sad, negative or sombre atmosphere.

It's time to start our film analysis.

The first thing I want you to do, is get your page set up.

This is where you're going to need your ruler, or your straight edge.

If you don't have those things, you can just fold your page, that's absolutely fine.

So you're going to need to fold your page, into four quarters.

If you write quite big, you might want to fold your page in half, and use both sides.

And then you'll have lots of space, for all of your ideas.

Your four sections on your page, needs to be titled, setting, colours, sounds and character.

These are the four different aspects of the film, that we're going to be analysing today.

Pause the recording, and get your page ready.

Hopefully you are now all set up, ready to start making some notes.

We're going to start with focusing on the setting, of this film clip.

The setting means, where the story takes place.

So we're going to use all of our ambitious vocabulary, to try and describe things like the beach, and the cliffs and the sea, and maybe even the whales lying on the beach.

Pause the recording now, and make some notes, under your heading, setting.

I've written down some ideas, that I'm going to share with you now.

If you want to copy any of them down, then please do so.

Rough waves crashed.

I can see the waves are really rough, because they're creating that white foam.

Frothing sea, that's another way to describe that foamy sea, that shows that it's really rough.

Cold, wet sand.

I've used two adjectives that describe the sand, so I've got a comma in between, because there are list of adjectives.

Strong winds, towering mountains, that shows the mountains are like towers, or they're looming over the villagers.

Jagged cliffs, overcast sky, that describes that really grey sky, where you can't see any clouds or sun at all.

Hazy mist filled the air.

A mist is little bit like a fog, makes it difficult to see, it's like little water droplets in the air.

Motionless shapes, that describes the whales, lying on the beach, not moving.

You'll notice that all of my descriptions, have a really negative feel, because they all add to that atmosphere, that we want to create, where we want to create, that feeling of being really upset, and desperate and generally quite a negative feeling.

If you want to pause the recording, and write down any of those ideas now, please do so.

Moving on to think about the colours in this scene, and I can see straight away, from looking at these pictures, that there are no bright colours at all.

It's very, very washed out, bleak or drab.

Pause the recording, and write down any words you can think of, to describe the different colours in this scene.

Again, I'm going to share some of my ideas, and if you want to copy them down, then you can.

A blanket of grey.

That's a really good way to describe the sky, because it's all one colour.

It's like a blanket of grey.

Foamy white waves.

We talked about that frothiness in the waves already, and that gets across the idea that the waves are very ferocious and rough on this day.

Dull, dreary, grey again, gloomy, drained of colour.

So as we said, no bright colours.

It's like all the colours being drained or sucked out of it.

Bleak, if you want to steal any of those ideas, and copy them down yourself, please do so now.

Moving on to think about the sounds now, what can you hear in this film clip? Write down any words you can think of, to describe the sounds.

off you go.

I'm going to share some of my ideas with you now, groans or moans of the whales.

So as they're lying there, they're not very happy, they're not feeling very well.

And some of them are even dying.

They might be groaning or moaning.

Desperate wails, that could be the people desperately wailing there, to show that they're really upset, the whales are dying.

Heartbroken cries, again, to describe the shouts that the people are making, to show that they're really upset.

Panicked, shouts, or yells.

Villagers wept, so that's the villagers crying.

Feet pounded, you can see in this image, some of the villagers are running back and forth, to the sea, to fill up their buckets.

So their feet are pounding, on that wet sand.

Waves crashed, howling wind.

If you want to steal any of those ideas, and put them on into your notes, please do so now.

The last section of our film analysis today, we're going to focus in on the characters.

That's all the people that you can see in the scene, trying to save the whales.

They're probably the villagers that live locally, to the beach.

I want you to write down, any words to describe how they might be feeling, but also think about their actions, their body language, their facial expressions, all the different clues that you have, to show that you how they're feeling.

pause the recording, and write down any of your ideas now.

I'm going to share my ideas with you now.

Despairing, that means they're almost giving up.

They're trying so hard to save the whales, but they're not managing to make a difference.

Distressed, to show that they're really upset.

Poured buckets of water.

So that's one of the actions that they're doing.

They're pouring buckets of water over the whales, to try and keep them wet and moist, so that they stay alive for longer.

Desperately doused the whales.

Now doused means to cover the whales in water, gently rubbed and caressed.

That's describing what they're doing to the whales skin, again to try and keep it wet and moist.

Heads hung low, that shows how they're feeling.

They're feeling really upset, and they're despairing.

So their head might hang low, or their head might be lowered.

Their shoulders slumped.

Again, that's another example of some body language, to show how upset they are.

Often when we're feeling a bit sad, Our whole body hangs down, because we're not feeling very happy.

Furrowed brows, so that's when you get those lines on your forehead, often when you're frowning, or you're feeling quite serious.

Frantically charged back and forth.

That describes the movement of the villagers, running back and forth to the beach, and back to the water, to fill up their buckets.

And then back to the whales, to cover the whales in the water.

If you want to write down any of those ideas now, please do.

I now want to focus in, on one character in particular, this is Rawiri.

Here's the man with the bubble hats on.

And he's actually Paikea's uncle.

So Paikea's dad's younger brother.

And he clearly is someone who's in charge, of the group.

He's walking around, he's checking on everyone, and he's giving instructions.

And at the end of the film clip, he notices someone, out of the corner of his eye, looking a little bit sad, and he goes over to comfort them.

Let's focus in on Rawiri now.

I want you to describe what he does, to show his feelings, and his emotions, and his personality.

Pause the recording, and write your notes now.

Okay, I'm going to share my ideas with you.

I wrote down, he glanced up.

So he was focused on one of the whales, and then out of the corner of his eye, he spotted this woman standing next to a whale, and he glanced or looked up.

He spotted or he noticed.

He slowly approached.

So he walks towards the woman in the whale quite slowly.

He was filled with dread.

So that's showing, he knows that the whale is probably dead.

So he's really, not looking forward to reaching them, and finding out that what he thinks has happened, has actually happened.

He lovingly embraced.

So embraced is another word for hugged.

He wrapped his arms around, so he gave her a big hug, to try and make her feel better.

He comforted her, and he rocked back and forth.

Almost like you would do with the baby, if you were trying to comfort it, he rocks back and forth, with his friends, trying to make her feel better, because the whale that she's looking after, has sadly died.

If you want to write down any of those ideas, on your notes, please do so now.

For our task today, I would like you to finish, your film analysis.

You need to describe the setting, the colours, the sounds, and the characters of the film clip, that we've watched.

I then want you to write a sentence, for each of your groups of words.

So you can see, I've got my group of words heads describe the setting, and I've taken a few of my ideas.

and I've put them into a sentence.

As the rough waves crashed against the wet sand, a hazy mist filled the air.

This will really help you, when you come to write your climax.

Because you can use some of these sentences, in your piece of writing.

Congratulations, you've finished today's lesson, well done for thinking of all that amazingly descriptive vocabulary.

That's really going to help you, when you come to write your climax, in a few lessons time.

If you would like, to please share your work, with your parents or carer, I will see you in your next lesson.

Goodbye.