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Playing with roles

First encounters

Interaction among characters in a film is essential to develop a film story. Can you remember famous phrases or words by characters in films? Who were they talking to? Your work in this section will be about the creation of dialogues for different scenes.

At the end of this section, you will have:

  • Watched and listened to casual dialogues in films.
  • Practised conversational English.
  • Revised adjectives to describe people.
  • Located places for filming scenes.
  • Created conversations among characters.
  • Filmed and presented several scenes.
Conversation
3dman_eu. Hablar (CC0)

Leading activities: working on dialogues

The activities that you will find below will help you create and develop informal dialogues for several film scenes, which is the mission of this section.

Activity 1: Watch, comment and listen

For a start, watch the first two minutes of the short film entitled Post it with no sound and imagine what the characters are saying.

With a classmate, guess the answers to the following questions.

  • Do the boy and the girl know each other?
  • What are they talking about?
  • Is the conversation formal or informal?

Watch the video entirely a second time with sound and check your answers. Comment with your classmate on the questions below.

  • How can you describe these characters' personality? Revise personality adjectives on the Grammarbank.com site.
  • What do they look like? Enter the englishwsheets.com page and revise how to describe physical appearance.
Activity 2: Socializing

With a partner, suggest other ways of starting the conversation between the two characters. Think of expressions they could use to greet, introduce themselves and say goodbye. You can find some help on the ESOLcourses.com site and on the BBC World Service page.

It is important that you practise social English expressions because you are going to use them in the dialogues that you will create for your short film.

Activity 3: About your favourite scene

Use the online tool Canva to create a poster based on a film scene that you like. Include in the poster a description of the scene and a photo or clip. Add adjectives to describe the characters' personality and physical appearance.

Publish your poster on the page entitled "My digital resources" of your Weebly site and share it with your classmates on Pinterest.

Extra resources

Filming scenes

The mission you are about to start is based on planning and filming a short film, which is the final challenge of this project.

Characters
MikesPhotos. Arte (CC0)

First, you will work individually and then with three other classmates.

Please, click on the headings below and follow the instructions to do the mission accurately.

Your work
  • Individually, film a place with your phone camera that will be the setting of one scene in the film that you and your classmates are going to produce.
  • Get together in groups of four and show the images to your groupmates. Tell them why you like this place and what tyoe of scene you can film there.
  • Agree on a film story and the characters that are going to take part in the film. Decide what event will happen and what the characters will say in each setting. Remember that you need to have at least four different shots. Each group can then discuss these and use them to come up with a story.
  • You can use storyboardthat for your project's draft.
  • Write down an introduction to your film story and develop an informal conversation among the characters.
  • Distribute the roles among you all and practise the scenes as much as possible.
  • Go back to the places/locations that you filmed. Film the scenes with the actors performing their roles.
  • On a fixed day, you will present your film scenes in front of your classgroup. In your presentation, consider the points below:
    • Introduce the topic of your short film.
    • Refer to the setting (time and place).
    • Describe the characters' personality and physical appearance.
    • While presenting, show images of your film scenes but do not play them.
    • Invite your classgroup to suggest an end for your film story.
Work evaluation
  • The way you present the information on your filmed scenes will be assessed by your teacher with the items in the 'Rubric for assessing a presentation'  (download in editable odt format, download in pdf).
  • You will finish the production and edition of your film in the next section (A film festival). When it is ready, your teacher will be able to assess your performance as actors/actresses in the film scenes considering your intonation, pronunciation, content (grammar and vocabulary), fluency.and interaction with other characters.
Work promotion

Upload the scene films  to your Google drive. Get a link and publish it on the page entitled 'My digital resources' in your Weebly site Share the link to your film scene section with your teacher and classmates on Pinterest. Remember to attach a picture to the link.

After completing your mission, enter your learning diary and answer the questions so that you can reflect on your learning process.

Learning diary

We hope you finished your mission successfully.

Create a new post on your blog with the title  'Playing with roles'.

Creado con eXeLearning (Ventana nueva)