Moving beyond the ‘shot-type list’ towards the ‘Meaning Model’: Placing meaning at the centre of film education

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.