The tenth muse: the art of visual film making

The tenth muse: the art of visual film making

Without question, literacy is a vital foundation for educational success. However, the term literacy refers, quite narrowly, to linguistic literacy; the process of meaning-making derived from written or oral human language. When non-literary forms of communication and expression are discussed academically and critically, it is often through the lens of a cultural studies analysis that focuses on narrative and ideology (Bender, 2012). Within cinema, this amounts to a study of the content in the screenplay, an approach which often disregards the form of the filmmaking; for example, mise-en-scène, editing, and sound design. Most educators would agree that literacy in the 21st Century has a wider scope. Some have suggested the extension of literacy to include a study of visual literacy, while others argue visual literacy and linguistic literacy should both be understood as elements of a whole literacy. This article investigates the differences and commonalities between visual and linguistic literacy claiming that the term literacy encompasses the reading of all forms of communication regardless of modality.

c. 2019 Art Education Australia.