Imagine racing down a road at 250 km/hour in a 1970 Dodge Charger, breaking into a bank with a gang of men donning clown masks, or singing on stage at an international competition with more than just the title on the line … and all before lunch period.
That’s what students in Paul Wunderlich’s Film & Media Arts Class at George McDougall High School get to experience. Wunderlich has been teaching the class for two years and says he looks forward to stepping into the classroom every day.
“I have always loved movies and I even worked at Blockbuster [Video] when I was younger,” he says.
Wunderlich adds that, although it was very common to spend a lot of free time watching movies when he was a teenager, the kids he teaches today often opt for short-form entertainment.
“It is not uncommon for me to have a student who hasn’t watched more than a handful of movies in their lifetime,” he says.
“That is part of what we talk about. How the long-form art of a movie allows characters to evolve and build up tension and suspense and add dimension to the film — something a short video clip can’t do.”
The class examines how things like camerawork, lighting, dialogue, settings, scene order, costumes and more help deliver the message a movie is trying to convey.
Wunderlich says some students start taking the class thinking it will be an easy mark, but they quickly learn there is much more to critiquing a movie than sitting back with a box of popcorn.
Grade 11 student Aidan Kernaghan admits that, when she signed up for the class, she was looking forward to, “watching movies and using the time to get some more important classwork done.” However, she found herself becoming invested in the movies and engulfed in the process of reviewing them.
“I learned a lot about what goes into filmmaking that you never really think about. There is so much more going on that you don’t pay attention to when you just watch a movie,” she says.
“But, when you sit there and analyze, you notice how the camera moves in an action shot to make you feel like you’re there. How the music builds and dies down to build intensity, or that certain dialogue at the beginning of the film can foreshadow what may happen later. It was really interesting learning the ability to understand the art of the movie and not just the entertainment.”
The students watch a fiction movie made after 2005 at the beginning of the week and spend the rest of the week discussing the details and completing related assignments.
The final assignment of the class gets the students to pitch the idea for a movie, as if to Hollywood executives.
“The pitch-your-own-movie project was probably one of the best things I have done in school,” says Kernaghan.
“I had a ton of fun working on it and Mr. Wunderlich allowed all kinds of creative freedom so we could do almost anything we wanted.”
Kernaghan’s idea was for a mystery/drama set in the late 1800s. The main character is a female university professor being blackmailed by someone who knows a secret that could destroy her life and career. She hires a private investigator to help her uncover this blackmailer who sends her tasks to do that become increasingly more violent.
Wunderlich says the final project involves students coming up with a director, style of cinematography, actors and more for their production.
“Through this project, I learned that there is way more to moviemaking than one might think,” says Kernaghan.
“We had almost two weeks to make the pitch, and it was barely enough time to get the basic outline for what the film could be, let alone details and surprises in the plot, creating dialogue for at least a 90-minute film, costume design, making things historically accurate and so much more that goes into making a work of art.”
Wunderlich adds his class has its own plot twist: It is helping to prepare the students for real life by teaching them how to have a low-stakes argument and opening them up to hear other people’s perspectives.
“It is also a stress-reliever,” he says.
“This is time where students get to forget about what is troubling them and talk about something they are passionate about. They get to dissect other fictional characters’ lives and try to figure out what it all means. It is engaging their mental energy in a positive way.”
We couldn’t let our film expert go without asking him: “What makes a good movie?”
“A great movie is the one that matches the vibe of the mood you are in at the time,” says Wunderlich. “The one that lets you escape and entertains you in that moment.”
SIDEBAR:
Mr. Wunderlich’s top 10:
- Top Gun
- Pitch Perfect
- The Place Beyond the Pines
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- The Town
- Crazy Stupid Love
- Dune (2021)
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Shrek
- Rush
