As part of an analysis of Blinded by the Light, juniors in Eduardo Barreto’s English classes produced podcasts discussing different scenes in the film.
Each podcast, which is between 5 and 10 minutes long, was produced by a group of 3-4 students. Barreto uploaded the completed projects to a Spotify he has created for projects for students. Baretto said that the goal of the project was to look at the anatomy of a scene and analyze every aspect of those moments in order to understand the film’s overall meaning.
“The skills that I was trying to target in a project like this is giving the opportunity to understand how little moments within a film, even little moments within a book or anything that we analyze contribute to great meaning,” said Baretto, who is new to PTS this year. “We were looking at a small scene from the angle of how music contributes, how cinematic shots contribute, how the dialogue or the lack thereof can contribute.”
Paulina Saade’s podcast, “Blinded by Words,” analyzed a climactic scene when the character finally realized his purpose and what he wanted to do, she said.
“I like that this activity was a little different from an average essay or the typical thing we would do. I liked that it was interactive and at the same time fun, and I was able to do it with my friends,” said Saade, who is in Barreto’s honors class. “I learned how to analyze a scene better with all the components and I learned how to basically explain a scene and analyze it in a way that other people can understand better as well.”
Luke Assolone’s podcast, “Blinded by Springsteen,” analyzes a scene in which the main character, Javed, of the Blinded by the Light film listens and truly connects with one of Bruce Springsteen’s songs, Assolone said.
“I liked working on the podcast with my friends since it took us seven hours to do one podcast and we messed up a lot but it was really fun,” said Assalone, who is in Barreto’s college preparatory class. “I learned how to better analyze movie scenes and I also learned partnership experience when working in a group project.”
Barreto said that he has always kept a podcast over the years with his students in order to give them the opportunity to convert interesting texts into audio form. But this year he believed it would be interesting to take a concept that is so visual like film and apply it to something focused on sound.
“I think to truly show mastery of content or skill students have to take what they learned and deliver it in a different medium,” Barreto said.
