Lesson Plan
Pedagogical approach: Extending students’ knowledge/conceptualising character construction.

View episodes 1 and 2 of Noah & Saskia.
These episodes set up the development of an on-line relationship between the alter egos of two teenagers: the shabby but quick-tongued Melbourne-based Saskia who writes a piece of music which she posts on the Internet and the London-based, Noah, by day the geeky brother of the school football star. Noah, who is transformed each night into ‘Max Hammer’ the main character in his self-created on-line comic that has created who discovers Saskia’s music and uses it in his comic strip, The Very Real and Excellent Adventures of Max Hammer. Saskia invents Indy, her cyber persona to chase down Max and expose him for stealing her music.

Some characters are developed using stereotypes. Stereotypes are characters developed to show a general personality or type of person. Usually there is not a lot of detail or character development, making them unrealistic but easily identifiable.

Students identify characters from Noah & Saskia who may be considered stereotypes: (teachers, the librarian, Noah’s father, Theresa at the Chicken Coop).

How do the filmmakers create these? Consider the use of attributes such as: clothing, age, occupation, country of origin, etc.

View the extra scenes on the Noah & Saskia DVD featuring Theresa, the manager of the Chicken Coop. Do these extra scenes “fill in “ the character of Theresa, making her more realistic, or play on the stereotype established in the series?

Filmmakers/authors use characteristics, catchphrases and other ‘signatures’ to develop easily identifiable and memorable characters. Students consider the ‘signatures’ connected with the following characters: Noah, Saskia, Renee, Clive, Saskia’s mother, Noah’s father. Also consider the means employed by the filmmakers to create these characteristics (gestures, facial expressions, ways of dressing, attitudes, sound effects, music, accents, etc).

Web designers also use these. Visit www.abc.net.au/noahandsaskia and explore Noah’s World with a shortcut to Clive’s World and Saksia’s World with a shortcut to Renee’s Fashion Tips Guestbook for further examples of stereotypes.

Activity: students use Worksheet 2, Character Signatures to explore a number of characters and how they are represented in terms of their habits, interests, catchphrases, gestural signatures (clothing, stance, gestures, etc) visual signatures (colours, physical attributes, placement, etc), audio signatures (music/SFX accent, tone, etc), avatar or other representation.

Activity: students choose a character from Noah & Saskia and using Worksheet 3, Character Profile create a character profile considering both the distinguishing features of the character and the means employed by the filmmakers to create this trait (gesture, audio, music, etc).

Activity: students have a ‘conversation’ with the character they have sketched. This may be done as an interview for a magazine, a chat in a chat room, a phone conversation, an exchange of emails, a diary entry, SMS or other. Have students decide on the form and create a series of questions which they then respond to in the voice of the chosen character.

Refer back to Worksheet 1 and discuss the influence of the types of communication (fax, SMS, chat, email, letter, landline, mobile, face to face) on the form the text takes.