Emergent Media Literacy: Digital

Animation in Early Childhood

Jackie Marsh
University of Sheffield, School of Education, UK
This paper outlines a research project in which three- and four-year-old children in
one nursery engaged with editing software to create short animated films. Research
questions were related to the knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts that
the children developed in the activity, the skills they demonstrated in undertaking the
animation work and the implications for curriculum development. Qualitative data
were collected over the period of an academic year as children were observed (using
fieldnotes and video camera) planning and producing the films. This paper analyses
some of the knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts developed throughout the project and suggests that early childhood educators need to understand the
nature of new authorial practices if they are to provide appropriate scaffolding for
childrens learning in the new media age.

doi: 10.2167/le660.0
Keywords: media literacy, digital animation, multimodality, early childhood
In a global context, early years curricula are focused on print-based texts and
in many early years settings childrens previous learning in homes and communities with new technologies is largely discounted. However, such learning
is becoming increasingly central to childrens multimodal, communicative
practices (Marsh et al., 2005). This paper outlines a research project in which
three- and four-year-old children in one nursery engaged with editing software
to create short animated films, some of which were planned initially using storyboards. Research questions were related to the knowledge and understanding
of multimodal texts that the children developed in the activity, the skills they
demonstrated in undertaking the animation work and the implications for curriculum and professional development. Qualitative data were collected over
the period of an academic year as children were observed (using fieldnotes and
video camera) planning and producing the films. This paper analyses some of
the knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts developed throughout
the project, in particular childrens understanding of the affordances offered
by the different media, that is what each media enabled them to do, or how it
limited possibilities. In addition, the processes the children were involved in as
they produced these multimodal texts were analysed in relation to Lankshear
and Knobels (2004) categories of the writer/reader roles of the digitally at
home, specifically, the roles of designer of texts and text bricoleur. The implications of this work for policy and practice in early childhood education are
discussed.
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Changing Literacies
Although it is widely accepted that there have been profound changes to
literacy as a result of technological developments in recent years (Carrington,
2004; Kress, 2003; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003), there is far less agreement on
what this means for literacy itself. Some argue that literacy is still focused on
written language (Kress, 2003), others that it should now be seen as plural in
nature and embodying a range of modalities (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Just to
add to this confusion, phrases which incorporate the word literacy are now
being used to suggest competence in a range of areas emotional literacy,
computer literacy and so on. The area which is a focus for this paper is media
literacy, a term which now has wide currency within England as a result of the
Office for Communications (Ofcom) remit to develop media literacy amongst
the general population.1 Ofcom define media literacy as the ability to access,
understand and create communications in a variety of contexts (Ofcom, 2004).
Within this paper, this term is used to indicate that the activities analysed fall
within this remit, although the broader argument is made that these activities
should take place within the communications, language and literacy strands of
early years curricula. In addition, it needs to be recognised that if media literacy
were to be introduced as a separate curriculum subject from English, this has
dangerous consequences for the literacy curriculum itself, which could remain
enmeshed in print-focused practices that relate more to the social milieu of the
20th century than the 21st.
In relation to young children, there is growing evidence to suggest that they
are engaged in a wide range of digitised literacy practices from birth (Marsh,
2005). A major US study conducted for the Kaiser Foundation (Rideout et al.,
2003) surveyed over 1000 parents of 06 year olds. They found that young
children were using screen media (television, video/DVD, computers,
console games) for approximately two hours per day. This is a similar figure
to that identified in a recent study conducted in England (Marsh et al., 2005).
In addition, very young children are acculturated to family social practices
which utilise a range of contemporary technologies, such as text messaging
and interactive television (Marsh, 2004; Gillen et al., 2005). By the time they
start nursery education, many children are already competent in using a wide
range of technological artefacts and have developed understandings about
their uses in wider social practices (Knobel, 2005). However, this knowledge is
not always recognised or built upon in meaningful ways (Knobel & Lankshear,
2003; Plowman & Stephen, 2003).
This paper explores the digital communicative practices of three- and fouryear-old children as they made animated films using a laptop computer.
Animated films are created by sequencing a series of still images until they give
the appearance of movement. They can be produced in various ways through
drawings, models and computer graphics, for example and they form a large
part of many childrens cultural pleasures, as the popularity of films such as
Toy Story (Walt Disney Pictures, 1995) and Finding Nemo (Walt Disney Pictures,
2003) suggests. There has been very little research undertaken in relation to the
digital production of films by young children.
In a recent review of research which has focused on the analysis and pro-

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duction of the moving image, one important aspect of media education, Burn
and Leach (2004) identified only 12 studies in the UK which were relevant to
their review and, of these, four involved children of primary school age. None
involved children in the foundation stage (three- to five-years-old). This lack of
attention in the early years to a range of contemporary communicative practices
is of concern, as it is clear that in this post-Fordist society, young people will be
leaving school and emerging into the labour force needing a range of skills and
knowledge which will equip them sufficiently well for employment in technologically driven, globalised societies (Luke & Luke, 2001). The concern to develop
digital literacy is not confined to employment needs; technology-mediated
literacy forms a large part of children and young peoples out-of-school social
practices (Lankshear & Knobel, 2005). These developments require an education
system which acknowledges the centrality of digital literacy practices from birth
in order to build on and develop these in appropriate, incremental ways, instead
of viewing such practices as suitable for development only at a later stage of
schooling, once children are competent with alphabetic print. Lack of attention
to digital communicative practices ignores the extensive knowledge of a range
of new media, such as computer games and mobile phones, that young children
bring with them to nurseries and kindergartens (Marsh, 2004). The introduction of media education into early years curricula is, therefore, needed urgently
if children are to build successfully on their funds of knowledge (Moll et al.,
1992) and extend appropriately the skills, knowledge and understanding they
acquire in homes and communities from an early age.
There have been a few studies conducted which have explored the production of films in schools. Reid et al. (2002) evaluated the work of 50 schools which
introduced digital filming and editing into the curriculum and found that introducing work on moving image media supported the development of a range of
transferable skills, including problem-solving, negotiation, thinking, reasoning
and risk-taking (Reid et al., 2002: 3). In addition, they determined that the
opportunities afforded by animation work were strong because of the way in
which children could combine voice, gesture, music, image and language. It
may be the case that the difficulties in developing sustained analyses of media
production in schools lie in the area of assessment and evaluation (Goodwyn,
2004). There has been little documented work on the assessment of production skills and most acknowledge the complexities and challenges faced by this
aspect of media education (Buckingham et al., 1995). In this study, one of the
concerns was to map out the skills, knowledge and understanding developed
in the animation production in order to provide a framework for future work
on assessment.

The Project
The study was undertaken in a nursery in the north of England. The nursery
serves very diverse racial and linguistic communities, with a large number of
refugee families located in the area. It is an area of economic deprivation and
high unemployment and thus constitutes the type of catchment area which has
families often labelled at risk. However, the concept of at-riskness has been
widely critiqued because of its focus on the communities in question rather

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than the larger sociopolitical context which creates poverty in the first place
(Carrington & Luke, 2003; Gregory & Williams, 2000). Although 53 children
took part in the animation work, this paper focuses on the work of only three
children: Jasim and Sofia, who were both four years of age, and Emma, who was
three until the final month of the project, when she had her fourth birthday. The
work of these three children in particular was chosen for discussion because it
exemplifies the theoretical concern of this paper; that is, the processes involved
in moving from print to moving image media. Jasim was a boy of Pakistani
heritage who spoke Punjabi as a first language and English as an additional
language. Sofias family were refugees from Somalia and she spoke Arabic as
a first language. Emma was white, monolingual, and lived with a middle class
family. Although Jasim and Emma had access to computers at home, neither
had engaged in animation work before. Sofia did not have access to a computer
at home.
During the study, an animation studio was set up in one corner of the nursery
on a regular basis. This consisted of one or two laptops, connected to which
were webcams. There were a variety of props to hand for the animation: toy
figures, artefacts and scenery. Some children planned their stories first using a
storyboard, although the majority preferred not to plan them at all. The children
filmed the plastic figures using webcams, chosen because their small, pod-like
shape meant that the cameras could be placed in stable positions by the children
and could be operated using the laptops. The children then used a piece of
film-editing software, imovie2, to edit the animations. Although imovie has been
found to have limitations for more advanced moving image production work,
such as that undertaken by media studies students in secondary schools (Reid
et al., 2002), it was a very effective piece of software in the project discussed in
this paper.
Children were provided with opportunities to undertake the activity over
the course of the school year and 53 three- and four-year-old children in total
were involved in film production. Research questions which guided the project
included: what knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts and production skills are developed in this activity and what are the implications for
curriculum and pedagogy? I took part in the activity as a participant observer,
acting in the role of teacher, but also making notes and filming the workshops
at appropriate times. I demonstrated how to use the hardware and software,
outlined the process for children, answered their questions and provided help
when they required it. This scaffolding took the form of verbal instructions and
modelling when appropriate. The majority of children were able to complete most
of the activities independently, requiring adult help only in the transfer of images
from the webcam software to imovie2. The activity did demand that the children
were able to control a mouse independently. A minority of children found mouse
control so difficult that they did not persist in the task of creating a film.
Research methods included observations of the children using the hardware
and software, which were recorded as fieldnotes, video filming of short
sequences of the animation workshops and analysis of the films the children
produced. Parental consent was obtained for the use of video films and childrens participation in the research. Children were not formally interviewed,
but were asked about their previous experiences with new technologies in the

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home and community and questioned about their understanding of aspects of

the animation activity during the workshops. These conversations were detailed
in the fieldnotes.
This paper reports on findings arising from the following data sources: fieldnotes from 19 animation workshops, 64 minutes of video film of the children
producing the films, and 67 films produced by the children. Inductive coding
(Strauss, 1987) techniques were used in analysing the data from the fieldnotes and video recording and a thematic framework (Ritchie et al., 2003) was
developed for categorising data relating to the production of the films. The childrens animations were examined using a process in which individual stills and
completed films were analysed in terms of plot, characterisation and setting.
Aspects of editing (such as the camera angles and the soundtrack) were then
subject to close scrutiny, drawing on principles underpinning the grammar of
moving image (Burn & Parker, 2003). Where relevant, comparisons were then
made with the story as planned on storyboard.
The initial part of this paper focuses on only three aspects of the skills,
knowledge and understanding developed in this activity. The first relates to the
childrens understanding of the affordances offered by the different media. The
second centres on their understanding of the process of transduction (Kress,
2003), which is the process of transforming semiotic material from one mode to
another. The third issue of concern is that relating to the understanding of the
principles of animation, specifically timespace dimensions. In the final part
of the paper, the processes the children were involved in as they produced the
animated films were analysed in relation to Lankshear and Knobels (2004) categories of the writer/reader roles of the digitally at home, specifically, the roles
of designer of texts and text bricoleur.

Multimodal Stories
An analysis of the data collected during this project indicated that a wide
range of skills, understanding and knowledge was developed (see Appendix for
a summary of these). Given the lack of knowledge we have of young childrens
understanding in relation to multimodal texts, the following discussion focuses
on the childrens awareness of the affordances of the different media used and
the transduction process. Both of these concepts (affordances and transduction)
have been explained in the work of Kress (2003). Affordances are the possibilities offered by different modes, what kinds of representations they will allow
and what they will or will not permit in terms of use. Transduction occurs when
semiotic material is shifted across modes:
This is not the process of transformation, the process which works on a
structure and its elements in one mode, but of transduction, a process in
which something which has been configured or shaped in one or more
modes is reconfigured, reshaped according to the affordances of a quite
different mode. It is a change of a different order, a more thoroughgoing
change. (Kress, 2003: 47)
In relation to the childrens understanding of the affordances of the different
modes, this was expressed in various ways. Sofia, aged four, planned a story

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Table 1 Similarities and differences in the stories across the media, identified by the
children
Similarities
Characters the same
Same story in both (point related to
plot structure)

Differences
Characters move in the animated
film
The animated film included sounds

on paper which was quite typical for this age group in that it included familiar
characters drawn from her experiences of family life. The storyboard outlined a
narrative that focused on a girl who was walking and clapping. A baby entered
the plot and the baby crashed the cupboard. Sofia then produced an animated
film in 10 frames which incorporated a soundtrack that included clapping and
crashing sounds at appropriate points in the story. What was interesting about
this film was that Sofia had spent some time observing other children making
their films before she attempted her own. During those observations, she had
seen children add a soundtrack to their films and two of the soundtracks on
the menu of imovie2 consisted of the sounds of an audience clapping and glass
breaking. These were duly incorporated into Sofias animated film and it is
tempting to consider whether she had included these elements deliberately into
her storyboard because of her anticipation of the affordances of the digitally
produced text.
A number of children in the study were asked, once their stories in both media
were completed, what they felt were the similarities and differences between
their paper and moving-image versions. Their answers are collated in Table 1.
Sofia suggested that the difference between her story on paper and the
animated film was that one could hear the cupboard crashing on her film.
These data point to childrens emergent ability to articulate the differences in
the affordances of different modes. Children demonstrated their implicit understanding of this in their creation of the films, often drawing on features of the
visual mode (relationship of objects to each other in space) and aural mode
(adding very specific sound effects to their films). None of the children who
planned their stories on paper first appeared to have difficulties with the task
of recreating their story multimodally, in that all of the transitions from paper
to digital media maintained key aspects of the paper-based narrative, whilst
utilising the affordances of the additional modes effectively. The childrens
early understandings of the principles of this transformation may have been
developed through their experiences of encountering narratives in a range of
media from an early age (Robinson & Mackey, 2003).

Time and Space

In animated films, still images are sequenced to portray movement and this
presents a challenge in terms of childrens understandings of time and space
in multimodal texts. For some children, the three-dimensional sequencing of
actions in a chronological narrative proved to be difficult. This could have been
a result of difficulties in conceptual understanding of what was required, no
doubt related to their particular stage of cognitive development. For example,

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some children attempted to convey movement through their framing of characters and animals for a single still shot, rather than sequencing that movement
across frames. This, noticeably, was a feature of the work of some boys. In the
following example, Jasim spent a long time juxtaposing a large number of
animals for one shot, conveying action through the sound effects and gestures
he used as he placed the animals. However, when edited, his films conveyed
little movement or narrative structure, as can be seen in Figure 1 this had all
been contained in the setting up of the shots.
In the next example, Emma developed a storyboard which consisted of 12
individual frames that detailed a complex story of a family visit to a campsite.
The narrative involved a car journey, the family putting up the tent, sleeping
overnight in the tent, playing football on the campsite and having a flat tyre on
the way home. As can be seen in Figure 2, Emmas film maintained this complex
plot.

Figure 1 Jasims film

Figure 2 Emmas campsite film

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In this example, Emma appears to be presenting key moments in her plot it

is a three-dimensional version of a storyboard. Indeed, in many of the films
created by the children in the project, they treated each clip as a scene in itself,
rather than understanding that the principle of animation is the presentation
of movement frame-by-frame. This was also the case in the animation work
that Sefton-Green and Parker undertook with six- and nine-year-old students
(Sefton-Green & Parker, 2000). In that study, children were more concerned with
conveying key points of action in the narrative than portraying movement and
this was also the case with Sofia and Emmas work seen here. That, perhaps,
reflects the way in which the children were transferring understanding of plot
located within their print-based narratives to the new mode and they were thus
treating the animation activity as if it consisted of the simple process of transforming plot from paper to screen. Indeed, there are many similarities across
modes, and the structuring of stories in both printed and moving image media
has been identified as analogous, with narratives in both modes having similar
characteristics (Robinson, 1997), but it is the case that the affordances of these
modes are very different and so some fundamental changes occur when moving
from one to the other. However, although the evidence from the work of Sofia
and Emma suggests that the children found it difficult to understand the durational element of the construction of animated films, in a closer look at the work,
it is possible to trace an emergent understanding of the principles of animation.
For example, in frames 7 and 8 of Emmas film (Figure 2), the football used in
the football match can be seen moving across the pitch. This may indicate that
Emma has grasped the underlying principles of animation and this comes to
the fore when she attempts to convey a football match, which focuses on the
movement of a ball across a field. However, in addition to issues relating to
stages of conceptual development, it is not surprising that the children found
the portrayal of movement using still pictures difficult, given the challenge such
work posed to their habitual use of the timespace continuum when constructing texts. In Figure 3, this continuum is represented by a quadrant.
Quadrant A represents those texts in which both time and space are highly
salient. This is the case with moving image narratives, which have a chronological sequence and are also visual texts that depend on images. Texts in
quadrant B still have time as a central element, but spatial considerations are
less important. Oral and written narratives, which depend on chronology, but
do not incorporate images, belong here. Of course, space is more important in
written narratives than oral, given the importance of the space of the page, the
layout and so on (Kress, 2003), but it is certainly less important than it is for
texts which belong in quadrants A or C. Quadrant C represents texts in which
spatial issues are very important, but time less so. Texts which can be placed in
this quadrant include still images, or non-chronological moving image texts.
Finally, in quadrant D, texts in which neither time nor space are salient can
be placed. These include non-chronological oral or written reports (although
again, space will be more important in written reports than oral).
Because the animation activity involved shifts across the time continuum,
from quadrant Cto A, and shifts across the space continuum, from quadrant B
to A, the evidence in this paper suggests that it presented conceptual difficulties for the children. Since the storyboard focused their attention on overall plot

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Time highly salient

Moving image
narratives (A)

Oral or written
narratives (B)

Space highly salient

Space less salient

Non-chronological
writing or oral reports
(D)

Still images or
non-chronological
moving image texts (C)

Time less salient

Figure 3 Timespace continuum

construction, it shifted the emphasis away from the principles of animation. I

decided, therefore, to work with children on one key point in their narratives
and help them to construct animated movements on a micro-scale, focusing on
the timespace dynamics of quadrant C. So, for example, the football match in
Emmas camping story was chosen as the sequence for focused work, because
she had already demonstrated an emergent understanding of the principles of
animation here. Emma worked on portraying movement of the football from
one player to another and did not place this within the wider narrative context.
Once the process of creating this animated movement was modelled for her, she
worked independently on creating 23 shots which, when sequenced, conveyed
the movement of the ball (see Figure 4).
It may be the case that if children at this age develop an understanding of
the principles of animation through single-action sequences, in future years
they would be able to extend this to create extended animated versions of their
stories. However, as was suggested earlier, very little of this kind of media
production occurs in the early years of primary school and, therefore, it is not
possible to map out a possible continuum of skills and understanding at this
stage. Nevertheless, from this work, it is clear that there are a number of learning
opportunities offered in the development of animated films in the early years.
In exploring the processes involved in moving narratives from page to screen,
Jasim, Emma and Sofia had learned that stories can be told in a number of media
(Mackey, 2002); images, sounds and words can be combined to create narratives
(Bearne, 2003); stories planned on paper can be changed, through the transduction process (Kress, 2003), to feature the affordances of different modes; and that
stories have a beginning, middle and end and can feature one or more characters, in whatever media they are developed. All of these are important lessons
in a new media age, as all of the skills, knowledge and understanding identi-

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Figure 4 Stills of Emmas football film

fied here are necessary as children begin to navigate the multiple platforms of
current technologies (Kress, 2003; Mackey, 2002).
However, one consequence of this kind of curriculum activity is that educators
need to develop new understandings of the nature of authorship and readership
in relation to multimodal texts. In the final section of this paper, the processes the
children were involved in as they produced these texts are analysed in relation to
Lankshear and Knobels (2004) categories of the writer/reader roles of the digitally
at home, specifically, the roles of designer of texts and text bricoleur.

Changing Textual Practices

Lankshear and Knobel (2004) identify four roles that they suggest characterise the practices people engage in as they produce, distribute and exchange
texts in a new media age. Using the phrase the digitally at home to describe
a generation comfortable with and competent in the use of new technologies,
the roles they outline for these digitally at home are: a designer of texts; a
text mediator or broker; a text bricoleur and a text jammer (Lankshear &
Knobel, 2004). In the following analysis, I will focus on two of these roles a
designer of text and text bricoleur in order to explore the processes in which
the children in this study engaged.
Lankshear and Knobel emphasise that the concept of design, rather than
traditional conceptions of authorship, is important in the production of multimodal, digital texts. This has also been a constant theme in the work of Gunther
Kress over the last decade (1998a, 1998b, 2003).
Design takes for granted competence in the use of resources, but beyond
that it requires the orchestration and remaking of these resources in the
service of frameworks and models that express the makers intentions in
shaping the social and cultural environment. (Kress, 1998a: 77)

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In relation to this study, the children demonstrated skills in relation to the

design of multimodal texts. They made deliberate choices about characters,
props, setting, soundtrack and the design for each still frame, choices which
were based on knowledge of the screen as a medium for communication and the
genre of animation as a form of entertainment. Children demonstrated critical
engagement with texts through these decisionmaking processes. This has implications for the early years educator in that an understanding is needed of the
ways in which such decisionmaking processes can be supported and extended.
In addition, recognition of the range of resources children draw on as they make
these decisions need to be developed within nurseries and schools. Educators
who have a broader understanding of the rich range of textual practices children
bring to the classroom have greater opportunities to enhance childrens learning
(Dyson, 1997, 2002; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005).
In addition to text designer, Lankshear and Knobel also identify the role of
text bricoleur as being significant to contemporary communicative practices.
Lankshear and Knobel draw on de Certaus concept of bricolage as being the
artisant like inventiveness (de Certau, 1984: xv, 66) of peoples everyday
practices in which they draw on whatever is to hand to create texts. Although
Lankshear and Knobel illustrate the concept by focusing on web users creation
of texts within online communities, the principles can be applied to the way in
which some of the children in this study created their multimodal, animated
films. For example, Jasim and his friend Tahir decided to use a snatch of the Jungle
Book soundtrack they had heard being played by other children as part of the
soundtrack for a film they had produced based on a story about jungle animals.
Sofia incorporated the clapping and crashing soundtracks she had heard others
use into her narrative. Of course, this intertextual aspect of childrens texts is
not particular to new technologies; as the work of Dyson indicates in relation to
childrens paper-based writing tasks, Bahktinian principles of heteroglossia and
dialogical processes permeate childrens classroom work (Dyson, 1997, 2002).
The roles identified by Lankshear and Knobel, those of designer and bricoleur,
require new understandings of educators. For example, there is a need to identify
the nature of the scaffolding and adult support children need as they create
multimodal, digital texts. The modelling provided for Emma as she moved from
animated film as conveying key moments in her plot to animated film as portraying
movement is one example of the way in which teaching and learning approaches
to the timespace elements of traditional texts need to be rethought. But there are
additional concerns related to design and text construction that need consideration.
The creation of appropriate pedagogical and curricular approaches can only occur
through detailed analyses of classroom projects which trace the skills, knowledge
and understanding developed in media production. There is a large body of work
which outlines what is known about young childrens print-based literacy skills
(Hall et al., 2003; Neuman & Dickinson, 2001). There is now an urgent need to begin
to map out similar terrain in relation to multimodal communicative practices.

Conclusion
In this paper, I have outlined a project in which aspects of moving image
education were introduced into the curriculum of one nursery. Only by pushing

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at traditional curriculum boundaries can educators begin to shape a curriculum

which will be relevant for a highly technologised 21st century (Lankshear &
Knobel, 2005). Although projects such as the one detailed in this paper are a
start to this work, greater attention could be paid to media education in early
childhood by governments and policymakers who are responsible for curriculum development. Children and, in some cases, teachers can continue to
bring unbridled enthusiasm for, and expertise in, new technologies to the site
of learning, but unless curriculum and assessment frameworks reflect these
contemporary communicative practices, educational provision will continue to
remain out of step with rapid developments in the wider world.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Jackie Marsh, University
of Sheffield, School of Education, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JA, UK
([email protected]).
Note
1. See: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2004/11/nr_20041102

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Language and Education

Appendix: Knowledge, skills and understanding developed in the

animation activity
Actions

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Knowledge, skills and understanding

The ability to:

Technical skills

Controlling the mouse

Using camera
software
Using imovie software

move cursor to desired space

use left-hand button to select
click and drag
find appropriate button for taking
photograph
use various functions appropriately
(e.g. timeline, stop/replay buttons,
adding sounds)

Visual skills

Framing shots

position characters and artefacts

appropriately
use close-ups, mid-shots and long
shots

Understanding
of narrative

Creating stories

create a story with a beginning,

middle and end
create a story with one or more
characters
create a setting

Understanding Using different modes

of multimodality

understand the affordances of

different modes
be aware of the differences in
affordances of various modes
understand the processes involved in
transduction across modes

Understanding
of genre
(animation)

Creating stop-motion
animation

understand the principles of stopmotion animation (i.e. that a series of

still images portraying small changes
in movement can, when placed
together, create illusion of larger
movements)
understand the importance of
principles such as continuity

Awareness of
audience

Creating films which

reflected interests of
peers

identify themes which will interest the

audience (family, play, jungles)
identify props and soundtracks which
will attract the audience

Critical skills

Reflecting on product;
making changes
where necessary

identify aspects of the work which

needed changing, e.g. shots which
included childrens own hands
identify features which were
particularly successful in meeting
audiences needs and repeating these,
e.g. sound effects

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