ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how scaffolded learning structures, focuses and extends learning in the film aesthetic. Reflections from the students who participated in the project are used to illustrate how students experienced the film aesthetic and the filmmaking process. The young people in the Shostakovich Film Project participated as screenplay writers, storyboarders, actors, directors, cinematographers, camera and sound operators, composers, location managers, designers and editors. Recognising the parts or elements of the filmmaking aesthetic was evident in student responses to the Shostakovich Project. Students were dealing at a fundamental level with the form and the function of the film narrative aesthetic. The students in the Shostakovich Project had a rich learning experience from an immersion in a detailed ‘frame by frame’-like experience of what film and filmmaking can be. A language uses words to signify an image, idea or feeling, but in film the images are not signified or represented in another form; they are actualised and realised as they are.
