Media literacy: studying movie trailer in high school

• Grant number: 07/02395-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2007
• End date: January 31, 2009
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Alexandra Bujokas de Siqueira
• Grantee: Mariana Pícaro Cerigatto
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas. Universidade do Sagrado Coração (USC). Bauru , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Recently, Brazilian public policies have been promoting the use of the media within education. Such new actions integrate a broader international tendency of promoting media education and participatory culture. However, there is a lack of teaching materials and methodologies suitable for such a specific activity, which involves skills of multimodal literacy, technical knowledge and judgment criteria beyond the criticism of the pupil s mass culture pleasures. Within such context, this research project proposes to study the cinema trailers in educational activities for the Secondary Schools, inside the area called Codes, Languages and their Technologies. The methodology consists of selecting nine trailers of popular movies from three different genres and to create activities to explore the language and the narratives arranged to fulfill the public expectations. One departs of the hypothesis that the focus on systematic analysis of the language is the most productive way to reflect about questions of representation, identity, quality and taste.