Academy of Film - 12/13/18 Blog

Today in class we discussed how to apply academic lenses to Sparta High School and to film. First, we examined the word academic. The root word of academic is academy - an organized building or place for learning. Every academy, or in this case, a high school, has a variety of different courses that require students to master a set of skills.

Sparta High School Curriculum (from SHS website):
1.English/Language Arts
2. Health, Physical Education, and Wellness
3.Mathematics
4. Science, Technology, and Engineering
5.Technology, Careers, and Consumer Science
6.Visual and Performing Arts
7.World Languages and ESL


To help understand Sparta High School through an academic lens, we got into groups and selected one of the subjects from the curriculum listed above. For example, my group chose to delve into Visual and Performing Arts. Our job was to break down of the object (the object being Visual and Performing Arts).
First we broke it down into some of visual and performing arts classes that are offered at Sparta:

• Photography
• Sculpture
• Band, orchestra, choir
• Drawing and painting

Then, we broke those classes down into more specific categories: the skills that are taught in them:

• Photography
• lighting 
• composition
• focus
• Sculpture
• creativity/originality
• depth and shape 
• working with clay
• Band, orchestra, choir
• Playing/singing scales
• Sight reading
• Drawing and painting
• Color value
• Depth
• Blending

Next, the class considered experts in the field of the various curriculum (ex: painters, mathematicians, architect, etc). What would interest them in the movies we have watched this year?

Because my group discussed visual and performing arts, we said that "A professional photographer would be interested in the contrast used in No Country For Old men as inspiration for contrast and shot framing in their photos."

Another classmate wrote that "An engineering professor watching Wall-E would look at the designs of the robots in the film and try to apply it to modern robotics in order to advance technology." 

Examples like these show how film can apply to so many different areas of knowledge, from mathematics to philosophy. While movies are works of art, they can also certainly be educational. Film has the remarkable power to teach the audience about a topic they once knew nothing about. 

ALSO: be prepared to watch a movie in class tomorrow through different lenses!