Abstract
In 1990 Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Reading Images began a conversation based upon the practice of teaching image-orientated texts in Australian classrooms. Since then, however, little of this important conversation has been translated into meaningful pedagogical change for the teaching of kineikonic (moving image) texts in Australia. From state-run primary schools to national postgraduate film education institutions, the primary tool used to initiate students into the potential to create meaning through film – the shot-type list – has remained relatively unchanged. This article proposes an updated pedagogical tool – identified as the ‘Meaning Model’ – which draws from contemporary discourses around how films make meaning in seeking to bring understandings of the kineikonic mode into the classroom, in a practical and accessible way.
Highlights
In 1990, Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen published Reading Images, aspiring to ‘take a fresh look at the question of visual literacy’ in talking and thinking ‘seriously about what is communicated by means of images’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1990: 3)
Through their endeavours Kress and Van Leeuwen led a generation of literacy academics in Australia in an exploration of ‘the interpersonal grammar of images’, contributing to the development of a systematic and decodable process of ‘reading’ visual texts, based to a large degree upon the codes of social semiotics
This article has sought to explore the shortcomings of the standard shot-type list, one of the principal tools currently utilized by film students when beginning to learn about film both in Australia and the wider world
Summary
In 1990, Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen published Reading Images, aspiring to ‘take a fresh look at the question of visual literacy’ in talking and thinking ‘seriously about what is communicated by means of images’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1990: 3). A shot starting at a comfortable, social distance (a traditional medium shot) and ending in a close intimate shot of the human subject’s face (a close-up) tends to indicate that over the time of the shot the audience is asked to feel increasing amounts of empathy for the character This notion – of changing and compounding meaning with the moving camera – is fairly straightforward, once the initial concept of inherent meaning of the camera’s perspective is understood. Just as it does for the effect of proximity and angle upon camera perspective as discussed, how fast the background moves (how obscure it becomes) can serve to increase or decrease how much flux or turmoil a character’s situation is perceived as having Viewing this shot type within a spectrum of meaning (in this case from slower to faster background changes) allows for significant nuance in understanding, adding considerably to the range of expression available to those building meaning with film. It stands to reason that the same understandings of how a film camera’s relative height affects meaning apply regardless of whether the subject of the shot is human or inanimate
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