China 八年级（初二） Arts: Film and Digital Media

1. Sem.1 U1 Life through the lens

Shots, framing, composing a story

Coming soon

2. Sem.1 U2 Recreating the past

Characters, sets, lighting of a period

• Recreating the Past: Costume, Sets and Light – To show a story from long ago, a film team must make the past look real. Costume shows who a person is and when they lived. The set and props fill the place with the right objects and remove modern ones. Light then gives the mood: warm, high light feels calm, cold light from below feels scary, and dim side light feels secret.

3. Sem.1 U3 Tribute to classics

Watching, retelling, acting, creating classics

• Classic Films: Watch, Retell, Act and Create – A classic is a film that people still love after many years. To learn from it, do four things: watch closely, retell the scene in your own words, act it out with a friend, and make a short tribute clip that shows what you loved. Each step makes you notice more.

4. Sem.1 U4 Animation

Real vs virtual; animated characters

• Animation: How Still Pictures Start to Move – Animation is a row of still pictures (frames) shown quickly one after another. The eye and brain join them, so we see motion. Frame rate (fps) says how many frames are shown each second: more fps = smoother motion. Key frames hold the main poses; in-betweens fill the gaps (tweening). Main types: hand-drawn (frame by frame), stop motion (paper cut-outs, clay), 2D computer, 3D computer. Raster animation stores pixels; vector animation stores shapes as maths, so it scales without blur.

5. Sem.2 U1 All living things

Nature documentary

• Nature Documentary: Filming, Narration and Editing – A nature documentary shows real animals, plants and places as they are. To make one, film calmly from a distance with wide shots and close-ups, wait patiently, write short simple narration that matches the pictures, and edit the clips in an order that tells a clear story.

6. Sem.2 U2 Mountains and rivers through time

Landscape and history films

• Landscape and History Films: Land, Old Footage and Change – Landscape films show mountains, rivers and fields as the main character. They use wide, low-angle and high (drone) shots. History films use old footage and photographs as proof of the past. Together they often tell a story of change: the same place at different times, with a river that thins, a town that grows, or forests that shrink.

7. Sem.2 U3 Sound

Sound, dialogue and its power

Coming soon

8. Sem.2 U4 Digital sport

Virtual engines; tech and sport

• Game Engines and Virtual Sport Scenes – A game engine is a program that builds a virtual world from numbers. It places objects, runs physics rules such as gravity, shows the world through a camera, and repeats a loop about 30 or 60 times every second: read input, update the rules, draw the picture. Virtual sport scenes use the same tools to make a court, a ball and players that follow real rules.