kiriata hei momo
“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”
—Tina Fey
te ao Māori principles
There are key principals that we, as an English Department, consider important as part of a holistic study at school.
- Mana – The prestige and authority of the writer. Writers can build mana through impactful stories that uplift readers.
- Whanaungatanga – The connections and relationships between characters, writers, and readers. Literature brings people together.
- Kaitiakitanga – Guardianship and protection of stories, language, and knowledge. Writers have a duty to share stories responsibly.
- Wairuatanga – The spirituality and deeper meanings conveyed through literature. Stories can be profound and moving.
- Mauri – The essential life force or vitality of the writer coming through in their work. Writing with purpose and energy.
- Aroha – The empathy, compassion, and love writers show through their words. Literature builds understanding between people.
- Tikanga – The customs, protocols and values upheld through storytelling. Writers adhere to cultural principles.
Key Terms
| Genre | a style or category of art, music, or literature. |
| Conventions | a way in which something is usually done. |
| Techniques | a way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure. |
| Genre Specific Terminology | techniques that are associated with a specific genre of literature. |
| Audience | the people giving attention to something. |
| Purpose | the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. |
| Register | a variety of a language or a level of usage, as determined by degree of formality and choice of vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax, according to the communicative purpose, social context, and standing of the user. |
| Imagery | visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work. |
| Content | the material dealt with in a speech, literary work, etc. as distinct from its form or style. |
| Context | the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood. |
| Organisation | the way in which the elements of a whole are arranged. |
| Tone | the general character or attitude of a place, piece of writing, situation, etc. |
| Structure | construct or arrange according to a plan; give a pattern or organization to. |
| Form | a particular way in which a thing exists or appears. |
| Style | a particular procedure by which something is done; a manner or way. |
| Cinema | the production of films as an art or industry. |
| Cinematography | the art of photography and camerawork in film-making. |
| Film | a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images and shown in a cinema or on television. |
| Film | a thin flexible strip of plastic or other material coated with light-sensitive emulsion for exposure in a camera, used to produce photographs or motion pictures. |
| Lighting | the arrangement or effect of lights. |
| Director | a person who supervises the actors and other staff in a film, play, or similar production. |
| Screenplay | the script of a film, including acting instructions and scene directions. |
| Script | the written text of a play, film, or broadcast. |
| Actor | a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in films, or on television. |
| Camera | a device for recording visual images in the form of photographs, film, or video signals. |
| Frame | a single complete picture in a series forming a cinema, television, or video film. |
| Composition | the nature of something’s ingredients or constituents; the way in which a whole or mixture is made up. |
| Mise en scène | the arrangement of the scenery, props, etc. on the stage of a theatrical production or on the set of a film. |
Learning Objectives
- To recognise the overarching connections between text genres.
- To discuss existing knowledge about film and cinema.
- To make links with drama study of Year 10.
Exercises
Spelling
| sugar-free | multi-national | hyper-active | ultra-violet | micro-economics |
| photo-journalism | electro-magnetic | audio-visual | semi-automatic | pseudo-science |
| micro-organism | geo-located | multi-disciplinary | inter-dependence | cross-reference |
| self-motivated | well-informed | over-qualified | hyper-inflation | meta-analysis |
Summary Builder
Below is a piece of writing that you should attempt to summarise into around 100 words.
The Evolving Video Game Industry
The video game industry has grown into a dominant form of media, with games employing cutting-edge technology to create immersive interactive worlds. Major shifts are currently revolutionizing gaming.
Mobile gaming now accounts for half of global revenue, bringing gaming to billions through smartphones. Casual puzzle and strategy apps like Candy Crush earn huge profits through microtransactions and addictive gameplay loops.
Cloud streaming services like Google Stadia are set to make console-quality games playable on any device. Subscription services like Xbox GamePass provide unlimited on-demand game libraries.
Virtual and augmented reality headsets transport players into fantastical realms of full sensory immersion. Motion controls via devices like the Nintendo Wii get players off the couch and physically engaged.
Competitive esports have exploded into a major spectator phenomenon, with tournaments selling out massive arenas. Top players gain huge followings on streaming sites like Twitch. New leagues and infrastructure continue mainstreaming esports.
However, concerns remain around gaming’s potential health impacts, especially on youth. Loot box monetization also faces scrutiny as an unregulated form of gambling.
While innovation makes games more accessible and immersive than ever, companies must grapple with emerging risks. Overall, the gaming ecosystem is rapidly evolving in both exciting and troubling ways.
Film as Genre
kiriata hei momo
Welcome to the final of the literature genre studies for the pre Year 12 English programme in Macleans College.
There have been many overarching threads that have woven together to create a knowledge of how literature and language work and interplay to create wonderful texts.
Please don’t forget that all literature is connected, yes we have separated them into their genre througout the past few years, but concepts such as APRICOT, and the patterning of some of the more nuanced appraoches to analysis remain. And, in the previous genre, we introduced the concept of supplementary texts. They are vital in film as well.
Moving into film, we need to consider where the genre came from, and how it has evolved. The following videos summarise the history of film as part of the evolution of literature. They are well worth the watch.
From Drama to Film
If you attended Macleans in Year 10, you would have studied Macbeth and Shakespeare. This unit introduced you to a range of techniques associated with drama.
Here are some key ideas from that unit.
| Playwright: | The writer of the work, etymologically based on the idea of ‘wright’ meaning ‘worker’ eg the common last night of cartwright meant the worker of carts’. You may also refer to the ‘writer’ or the ‘dramatist’. The word ‘author’ is usually reserved for written texts such as novels or articles. |
| Accent: | The representation of local vernacular, often denoted through misspelling or apostrophe eg. gonna’ |
| Act: | Division of the sequence of action within the play. Often modern plays have two ‘acts’ separated by an interval. Acts are further subdivided into Scenes |
| Scenes: | A sequence of continual action in a play. Often denoted by the same location, or same characters throughout the duration. e.g. a change in setting means a change in scene. |
| Characterisation: | The process of developing a specific persona within the drama. Often characters are based on stereotypes of the community / society the play is depicting. |
| Costume: | The clothes worn by the character to create realism and authenticity. |
| Body Language / Gesture: | Messages given by the position or movement of the body. Gesture is more of a specific move to add emphasis to a particular part or word e.g. pointing while saying ‘look there!’ |
| Backstage: | The area behind the stage, including the ‘wings’ which are adjacent to the stage but unseen by the audience. |
| Cue: | A signal for an actor to do or say something. |
| Curtain: | The cloth that hands from the top of the stage which conceals the stage from the view of the audience. It is often closed before the show, during the interval, and then at the end of the show. |
| Actors: | Unlike other texts, the drama must be performed, and therefore individuals are required to perform the piece. These ‘actors’ often interpret the lines or the action. |
| Director: | The choreographer of the action. The director’s job is to bring the play to the stage through the setting, to the way actors relate to each other, to the tone of voice used. |
| Production: | The play is a performance and unlike poetry and novel / short story, was not designed to be read individually, or in an English class. Instead it is based on the premise that it will be witnessed, or enjoyed with others. The play was an early means of mass consumption – particularly for the Greek theatres. |
| Theatre: | Meaning both the discipline of performance – as in, being theatrical in personality, and the physical space where plays are performed. |
| Theatre Arts: | The collective name for lighting, sound, costume, props, make-up, and set. |
| Set: | The use of faux scenery to depict a location. Often through painting large walls. |
| Stage Direction: | The ‘instructions’ from the playwright to the actors on how to perform their lines, or information about the set. |
| Dramatic Irony: | Actions or remarks whose significance is not realised by all the characters. The audience, however, are aware. |
| Entrance: | To come on to the acting area |
| Exit: | To leave the acting area |
| Flashback: | Acting out an event from the past |
| Flashforward: | Acting out a future or imagined events |
| Linear Narrative: | All events happen sequentially |
| Lines: | The words of an actor’s part in a play |
| Non-Linear Narrative: | Events include flashback and flashforward |
| Monologue: | A character speaks their thoughts aloud. |
| Aside: | A remark or passage in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play. |
| Narration / Narrator: | Acting as a kind of ‘chorus’ from the Greek tradition, parts of the drama are told as a story by a seen (or unseen) narrator. |
| Pace / Cadence: | Speed of speech or movement. |
| Prop: | An item either on stage or carried / worn by a character |
| Scenery: | Resources used to create the setting where a drama takes place eg backcloths, furniture etc. |
| Script: | The written words of a drama |
| Soliloquy: | A single lengthy speech, made when no other characters are on stage. |
| Lighting: | The use of artificial light to highlight certain aspects of the acting space. |
| Special Effects: | Used to create a mood or atmosphere on stage eg. strobe light, mirror ball |
| Staging: | The position of the acting area relative to what the audience can see. |
Many of these have cross-overs with the film genre. For example, directors, actors, props, staging, flashbacks and lighting all have a place on a film set (the location where the film is shot).
As we move from the page to the screen, we must be mindful of a change in the language
Sentences
Paragraphs
Chapters
Novel
Becomes…
Shots
Scene
Sequence
Film
Subtle differences like the ones above make a large difference to the way we interpret the way that the story works.
Part 1
Ko te reo te tuakiri | Language is my identity.
Ko te reo tōku ahurei | Language is my uniqueness.
Ko te reo te ora. | Language is life.