In this lesson, pupils will be encouraged to listen closely and respond to how a piece of music in a film scene captures the tone of the events. The activity will work towards equipping them with bespoke musical vocabulary that they can use when speaking about a piece of music. This language is a transferrable skill across the other lessons in this resource series. By harnessing this language, learners can build confidence in speaking about music across a range of contexts.

This music resource introduces students to the concept of expressive performance using a selection of content from musical feature films. Learners will be introduced to the Expressive Performance dice and question card that will help them to delve deeper into musical performances in a wider variety of ways. Finally, learners will be able to summarise what makes a good expressive performance by creating a written guide to support their own performances.

In this music lesson learners will practise their technical listening skills enabling them to confidently apply music-specific language. Students will use their technical listening to critically evaluate film music including clips from La La Land (2016) and Jaws (1975). The Technical Listening activity sheet is carefully designed to scaffold their learning and the session concludes with the option to watch an additional clip and complete careers-focused home-learning.

In this lesson students will learn how sound creates dramatic impact in films. They will be introduced to the terms diegetic and non-diegetic sound and, using several film clips, will explore how these are used to create an atmosphere in a scene. They will then create their own soundtrack for a clip from Dunkirk making sure they include diegetic and non-diegetic sound. As a home learning task, students are asked to research the role of a film score composer. The powerpoint that accompanies this lesson can be downloaded from the Into Film website.