Costanzo - MMLit

     When I looked at the book list over break for the texts I would need for this semester I came across something a little unorthodox, Great Films by William Costanzo.  I can only imagine the look on my face when I read this, since I wasn't looking in a mirror at the time, but it probably looked like a kid's on Christmas morning.  The idea of studying film is something I greatly looked forward to doing and adding that to education just made it all the more better.
     I have loved film for as long as I can remember.  My freshman year of high school I would watch a new movie everyday, no matter what, often abandoning my homework to do so.  It was a great escape for me and I treasured every second of it.  Most of my English teachers did not share my sentiments.  I had one who refused to acknowledge that film even existed, even on our "fun days" we didn't watch movies, but he was actually the best English teacher I ever had so it didn't really bother me.  Another teacher allowed us to watch a couple movies throughout the year, but I never really made a connection between the movie and the class's literature.  I never really discovered a healthy medium in high school, which is something I think I subconsciously wanted very much.
     Costanzo offers a wide varied of how to approach and look at film in a classroom environment.  In high school all I knew about film was what I had taught myself.  I even wrote my eleventh grade research paper on the depiction of race in film and how it reflects and affects our society.  The ideas in the paper i used were all self taught I didn't have a book or teacher to tell me about film theories, or genres, or how to reach beneath the surface of a film.
     Then I read Costanzo and realized something, I had actually been taught of all these things just not with film.  Books have genres, characters, settings, and everything else you can think of, just like movies.  I knew what to expect when watching or reading science-fiction, I knew what it meant for a character to have an epiphany, I knew all of this without even realizing it at the time.
     We learn all of these different ways to incorporate technology into the classroom and how beneficial and can be, but my familiarity with those things is limited.  Film on the other hand is something I am very familiar with and look forward to using in my classroom.  I have seen countless films and because of this I find that I am able to "read" them.  I can't not wait to share this with students, some who hopefully will be as excited about it as I am.
     With books you have an author and an editor, with films you have to take into account of how many peoples visions are actually going into a final product.  This is kind of how I see my classroom, multiple visions  all contributing to how students view the world.  Films can introduce them to a world they have never seen and opinions they have never heard.  Every scene presents a new idea much like a lesson, all you have to do is be open to it.