Part of Lesson Plan: The Trailer Park

Activity Overview / Details

Tone:

Tone is a manner, a feeling or atmosphere the author has meant to set in the story, or towards a subject. It can also be considered as the attitude or feeling of the writer towards a subject. The tone can be revealed by the author’s choice of words and details. The author  may use a negative or positive tone for his work. Some possible adjectives to describe a tone, are seriousness, bitterness, joyful, humorous, amusing, angry, ironic, suspicious, and many more.

Mood:

Mood is the feeling or atmosphere perceived by the reader. They are  the emotions you feel while reading. The mood indicates a prevailing feeling, or frame of mind, especially at the start of the story. It creates a sense of expectation to reader of what is to follow. All the choices for setting, images, objects and details contribute in creating a mood.

Explain to the students that even movie makers strive to set a certain tone and mood for their work. Just like an author uses word choice and vivid imagery to set tone and mood, movie makers use dialogue, editing, music and lighting to establish a certain tone within their films.

They will watch two video trailers for the movies "Blades of Glory" and " Mary Poppins." First they will watch the original trailers that show the original tone of the films. Second they will watch re-cut versions of the trailers. Each trailer has a very different tone, and each will create a substantially unique mood in their audience.

Trailer 1: is the original film Trailer for the 2002 Will Ferrell comedy "Blades of Glory."

Trailer 2: is a re-cut trailer one of my students made using the original "Blades of Glory" film footage, but with totally different audio and editing techniques to flip this from a comedy trailer to a thriller/horror trailer. Mood & tone differences should be obvious!

Trailer 3: is the original 1964 Mary Poppins film trailer.

Trailer 4: is " The Original Scary Mary Poppins Re-cut trailer."

• Using their tone words list, they should first watch the clip and then select three tone words that best represent attitude of the trailer's creator.
• Pause after viewing the clip and discuss the tone words that the students selected, then have them choose mood words that describe their feelings after viewing the piece.
• Before showing the next trailer, remind students that the makers of this clip are attempting to take an classic movie, and re-cut it in a way that represented an entirely new genre of film.
• Using editing, music, dialogue and sound effects, the makers are attempting to create a completely different mood for both the Blades of Glory and Mary Poppins trailers.
• After viewing the "re-cut" trailer have students again choose 3 tone & mood words that would describe their feelings about the re-cut trailers.
• Discuss the drastic differences between the original & re-cut trailers. What do your students like about these examples? Do they better understand mood & tone? Are they ready to try to make their own trailer?
• Wrap up this class period and lesson on mood & tone.