Unit Guide

Using Film in the Classroom

Amanda Wlock

This curriculum unit, which may be appropriate for any high school classroom schedule and grade level, is designed to interrogate the tense relationship between films and books—what we rely on in the classroom and why. In combining Shakespeare with twenty first century, students will have the opportunity to discuss and contemplate our experience of Shakespeare on the stage but also on film, considering how film versions of his plays can offer deeper meaning, greater personal connection, and more intimate comprehension of Shakespeare’s words, ideas, and characters. Students will explore Shakespeare’s Macbeth via an introduction of filming techniques, digging into the questions like how we know what we are viewing and how do we know what those visual cues are telling us. By applying these questions to Shakespeare, this unit offers a way for students and teachers to discuss the play wholly, rather than just the words in a book. Within the unit teachers may find information about acting Shakespeare, film terminology and how to introduce it in the classroom, as well as acting and filming assignments for students as a culmination of their study of Macbeth and film.