For this, the pros and cons for making the change could be brainstormed. His essays in the Comments and Notes section are highly recommended for anyone teaching visual texts. Shaun’s artistic friend, Pete, serves as a contrast to the conformity of other characters and human figures in the book. It’s actually a very self-reflexive book in that it is about ‘visual literacy’, and the importance of having a critical imagination, and of playing. The Scaffold for Reading Visual Images can be easily adapted and used for The Lost Thing. The rows beneath each theme are to identify different aspects of the text which are somehow connected or related to the theme. Teachers can support students as they generate their own interpretations of the text by scaffolding ways of bringing their own understandings and experiences to their readings. Students can identify conventional aspects of narrative structure and plot within the basic detail offered by the written text. Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. What is that strange place glimpsed through a doorway at the end of an anonymous alley? A group of young adults, who meet online, get a hold of a cult underground graphic novel, which not only pins them as a target of a shadowy deep state organization, but also burdens them with the dangerous task of saving the world. Students are invited to bring in picture books from their younger years, either from home or borrowed from the library. This is the original sound design for the 'Utopia' sequence of the Academy Award Winning Short Film, "The Lost Thing" (2010) directed by … Asking Around 6. Interviews, speeches and panel discussion: The Guardian – In conversation: Neil Gaiman Talks to Shaun Tan, An ABC one-on-one interview with author Shaun Tan. Students are instructed to identify five features in any of the double-page scans that correspond to an element of construction and stick the post-it. The Lost Thing - Utopia Original Sound Design. Track 1 - UtopiaAll rights belong to Michael Yezerski Website - michaelyezerski.com From the narrow perspective of the written text, then, the narrative is presented in the form of an anecdote which Tan appears to offer directly to the reader: “So you want to hear a story?”. The point here is to assemble the different aspects of the text which can be read as contributing to the theme in some way. Examples can include: This assessment is focused on students’ abilities in producing a thematically cohesive narrative, supported by visual elements. There are also useful extra features that can support student learning. A2) in half or join two A3 pages together; alternatively, the front and back of an A3 page could be used. These transitions are: Refer to pages 237 to 240 of Springboard English Textual Power, which provides an extract from Scott McCloud’s Making Comics that includes illustrated examples of the transitions and the functions each has. The lost thing itself, for instance, could be read as a puppy-like creature if only the words were considered. Feeding The soundtrack to the Academy Award® winning short about a boy who finds a mysterious lost thing on a beach. "Utopia" shows the disheartening problems of pandemic TV ... a mass infection triggered by the end of "Lost" . In Book One, Thomas More describes the circumstances surrounding his trip to Flanders where he has the privilege of meeting Raphael Hythloday. This is a lovely, quirky interview in which Tan answers questions with simple illustrations. The Lost Thing has inspired a number of significant works in other creative fields including a live musical performance of the film’s soundtrack and a theatre production. Indeed, that story’s narrator says directly to the reader, “Don’t ask me what the moral is,” essentially challenging the reader to figure it out for him or herself. What kind of voice will the narrator need? It can be useful to make these post-it notes a different colour to the earlier activity to clearly differentiate the before and after responses. Simon Boswell's 1994 soundtrack to the video game Burn:Cycle is one of the most innovative uses of orchestral synths in game music. A simple Google image search of Spanish Surrealists will provide plentiful images to give students a sense of the colour, vibrancy and the often bizarre subject matter of Surrealism; qualities that can also be seen in the Utopia image. The State Library of Victoria has another useful video for this topic in which Tan answers the question, Do you encourage open interpretation of your work? It requires the reader’s imagination to complete the circuit, their thoughts and feelings being the current that fills the silent space, without prescription. Tan has written that he got the idea for The Lost Thing after making a sketch of a crab while at the beach. The third question can be altered to draw attention to the ways students have explored their initial puzzles. acclaimed Australian films The Black Balloon (starring Toni Collette, dir. You're invited to help us construct a fantastical gallery of Utopia filled with drawings of your own 'Lost Thing'. On the Beach 4. A fruitful discussion can be facilitated around possible reasons for the decision to change Pete’s character in this way. It could be read as a critique of economic rationalism, for instance, or the transition from childhood to adulthood; about the value of whimsy, our obsession with categories and bureaucracy, about alienation, claustrophobia, altruism, disability, entropy and the possibility of joy in places where this has been extinguished. What is missing from this world (according to this image)? Take each of these questions in turn and allow time for students to write their responses on the post-it notes. Houston Independent School District – Multiple Perspectives Unit. Tan shares many of his stand-alone artworks in his personal blog, The Bird King, which can be useful to show to students to see recurring ideas, themes and imagery. Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing 1. small, narrow post-it notes in a range of colours; index cards, cut in half (five card halves for each student). Elissa Down) and The Waiting City (starring Joel Edgerton, dir. Students fold a large page (approx. Ask students if what they have seen and thought has triggered any puzzling questions. It’s not as if the book is a puzzle punctuated by clues, that needs to be solved. Synopsis of Text: The Lost Thing is a humorous story about a boy who discovers a bizarre-looking creature whilst out collecting bottle-tops at the beach. Each of their contributions should be initialed for later use and to help facilitate discussion. In the middle of the rope write the statement, “. The three men discuss a wide range of civil, religious and philosophical issues. Introducing the book. However, I disagree completely. Even though Shaun Tan himself acknowledges that this character is modeled to some extent on himself, it would unnecessarily complicate the reading of the book at a Year 7 or 8 level to bring in questions of auto-biographical relevance. Written text in images: sometimes these are written on walls, like “MORE” in the beach wide view, or fragments of cutouts pasted into the images and which link with the background montage on almost all pages. Students may select their own page from The Lost Thing and complete the above sequence on their own. Different teachers may have placed varying degrees of emphasis upon these themes during the study so some guidance to students will be appropriate. As students respond to each of these questions they can attach their post-it notes under the appropriate heading. An argument might be made however, that The Lost Thing works as a graphic short story, in the same way a graphic novel suggests complexity of ideas that elevates it beyond a comic book. Prior to The Lost Thing Shaun Tan worked successfully as an illustrator/collaborator with other Australian writers such as Gary Crew and John Marsden. The quality of this footage is not great. The richness of detail, depth of ideas and cultural references and allusions enable adults to gain much from it, while the simplicity of narrative and quirky humour appeals to younger readers. Maybe it doesn’t come from anywhere.” It is interesting to note that while Pete is more “colourful” than others in Tan’s world, with his bright yellow shirt and his wavy hair, he is still constrained by the society he lives in, as can be noted by the plumbing images on his shirt and the fact that, according to the postcard on the back cover, he studies Applied Industrial Algebra. This means coming prepared with questions to ask of each other and willingly responding to other members’ comments, whether to agree, disagree, elaborate, seek clarification, or support with other examples. Students will undoubtedly be keen to see this adaptation and is presents an excellent opportunity to examine different aspects of multimodality. A utopia (/ j uː ˈ t oʊ p i ə / yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The nature of this society is elaborated upon in the Setting section below, but the contrast between it and the lost thing’s eventual sanctuary is striking. The Utopia represented in the text (below) is another world, hidden away from the rest of society and separated by a door. Thomas More coined the neologism utopia for his 1516 work that launched the modern genre for a good reason. Responses should be recorded under the heading “Social setting”. In this task students will take inspiration from one or more of The Lost Thing’s elements to construct their own picture book. Draw a line on a whiteboard (whole class activity), or place a string across some desks (small group activity) – this represents the tug-of-war rope. Since students will have varying degrees of skill and confidence with any particular visual art form, they should be free to select their own preferred way to create the supporting visual components. What will become evident from the retrieval chart exercise is that a range of textual elements combine to develop a theme, so that there is a cohesiveness among the elements that can support certain readings more successfully than others. This interview was conducted on the occasion of Tan winning the Academy Award for The Lost Thing. and we still haven't stumbled upon that cure. Such a discussion could be based in small groups that role-play a production meeting where the change is debated. describe if the element/s serve any other themes? For each of the features identified by students in the previous step, students write (on the index card halves) a brief explanation of how that feature “works” to encourage particular readings related to: character, setting (social or physical), theme, plot. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 13, 2020, Inspired by climate change, Sanger's album of ambient electronic beeps and synths was created to sound like music from another planet. Michael Yezerski This unit of work will have drawn attention to the way Shaun Tan took inspiration from various sources when constructing The Lost Thing. The link provided here is of a virtual tour of the expansive painting and it needs to be noted that there is adult content which some teachers may find unsuitable for Year 7/8 students. Why are there pieces of physics, algebra and calculus text-books framing every scene, and text written by hand on scraps of lined paper? The swirly, colourful lines depicted in his artwork suggest he sees the world differently and is willing to look at it from different perspectives; a point emphasised by him sitting on the roof of a house and looking over the neighbourhood and Shaun noting he has an opinion about everything. The Development of Themes (PDF, 97KB) retrieval chart offers some themes in the columns to focus on, but can be modified at the teacher’s discretion (a blank column can be left for students willing or able to identify a different theme). The Atlantis legend has been kept alive, fueled by the public's imagination and fascination with the idea of a hidden, long-lost utopia. This can either be done on paper or, for those teachers wishing to employ digital learning tools, an online mind-mapping application like Bubbl.us or Popplet. A significant feature of Shaun Tan’s writing is the simplicity of the written text. It is an odd combination of mechanical and organic parts, something it shares with other “things” in the book. For teachers wishing to incorporate newspaper articles as part of literacy development, this short biographical piece from Tan’s home town paper would be suitable. Using these categories, students can identify other elements in the book that could symbolise something greater than the thing itself. A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively. Before viewing the film, students can be asked to come up with particular challenges for the film-makers. This fall, Amazon Prime will take viewers everywhere to Utopia. gender, culture, religion); for the above, what is required to belong to each group; feelings: when they feel part of a group and when they feel excluded from a group. Each student expresses what they remember feeling about the book and what they find most memorable/interesting/enjoyable about it. In this interview, for instance (at 07:30), Tan relates the experience of showing The Lost Thing to friends and getting diametrically opposed responses such as “delightfully whimsical” and “it’s like a living nightmare”. The symbols can be discussed in terms of different categories. This is a chapter from an English text book which offers a unit of work based on Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. Rather, all members are responsible for the success of the discussion by maintaining the flow of ideas and elaborating them. More frequently updated than Tan’s website, this blog mainly features new art works by Tan, along with the occasional comment about them. This essay should be considered essential reading for any teacher embarking on teaching this book, as this extract about meaning and interpretation will attest. A simple set of prompt cards can be created to stimulate discussion and should be placed face-down near the panel. Panel layout: an interesting case is the sideways layout of the utopian scene. Duration Four weeks, assuming four lessons per week (not including time allocated for completing major assessment pieces). The success that followed The Lost Thing has allowed Tan to pursue a range of other projects and creative challenges, including murals and a digital app version of The Rules of Summer. Inspired by climate change, Sanger's album of ambient electronic beeps and synths was created to sound like music from another planet. The forthcoming streaming show, based on the Channel 4 series of the same name, has … Structurally and stylistically, The Lost Thing can be argued to more closely resemble a graphic novel, save for its length. Taken alone, the written text provides little detail about the narrative. There's a movie based on the town but I've never seen it. And the site he chose was an unlikely location for an urban utopia: 5,000 acres of farmland in one of the poorest parts of the state, with no water … What is the lost thing? When the book is the central focus, the film allows students to consider the affordances offered by the printed version in comparison to the film adaptation. Unlike a riddle, there is no clear answer to these questions, which remain open. This follow-up to the soundtrack to the video game “Burn:Cycle” reconceives four songs as shuffling techno workouts. A range of Shaun Tan images are presented here from various books, which can be useful when needing a projection for teaching objectives. Shaun Tan is a recognised artist as well as illustrator. Elissa Down) and The Waiting City (starring Joel Edgerton, dir. Monaco / Gentleman's Private Collection - BUNDLE. (Could any other adjectives apply?). Some teachers will recognise this process will be similar to the KWL activity (What I know, What I want to know, What I learned), which is focused on fact accumulation and knowledge. Apart from the reference to the windowless “tall, grey building” that houses the “Department of Odds and Ends” very little is revealed about the grim physical and social setting depicted in the images. Since the panel discussion requires students to synthesise knowledge and skills gained over previous lessons, extensive preparation time is not required. Shaun Tan’s website is a rich source of information about his approach to his work and insights about the texts he creates. When working I often like to think of words and images as opposite points on a battery, creating a potential voltage through a ‘gap’ between telling and showing. As a guide, these questions should move beyond the page under scrutiny and begin to open up to broader themes and ideas triggered by the image. NSW Government – Ways of Viewing and Teaching Picture Books. Once identified, the categories can be used to stimulate more ideas for students. Plot Summary | Add Synopsis Open the following websites containing the images: Provide students with copies of the document, Part 2 of the activity involves students looking up other works by the same artists and getting students to make connections with. The initial contributions can serve as stimulus for an early discussion with the teacher choosing some interesting responses and asking students to expand on their thoughts. Colours: notably, the juxtaposition between the grey bleakness of Shaun’s world and the utopian sanctuary can emphasise certain qualities of each place. Why not? Activity: After looking at the physical qualities of the lost thing and other “things” in the utopia scene, student can draw or construct their own “thing”; these creations can then be hung around the classroom to create a menagerie of “things”. outline the function of a particular element in the development of a theme; explain if the element/s suggest any ideas about the theme?