To analyse the author's use of colour.

Key Stage 2

English

Into the Forest by Anthony Browne

﻿Hi there. My name is Mr. Byrne Smith and today we're going to be doing some reading together. Now, this is the 5th of five lessons. So, if you haven't watched lessons one to four, please go and do that now. In today's lesson, we are going to be investigating and analysing the author's use of colour. So, come along and we'll make a start. Here's the agenda for today's lesson. First, we're going to have a quick introduction of the lesson in today's tasks. Then we're going to do a text analysis, investigating the author's use of colour throughout the text. Finally, we'll respond to the text. In this lesson you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil and, of course, your brain. If you need to go and get any of these things, pause the video now. Okay, let's introduce the lesson and introduce the purpose of the lesson. First of all, what I'd like you to do is choose from one of these three pictures. I'd like you to choose your favourite of these three, and I'd like you to be ready to explain why. This is a completely personal choice, it's completely down to you. Everybody has a slightly different favourite depending on what they enjoyed in the story, what they enjoyed about the pictures. So, pause the video and have a think. Okay. Now, my favourite image of these three would have to be this one in the middle. This is the point in the story at which I felt most excited about what was about to happen. And I had a real sort of combination, conflicting feelings and emotions. So, I felt scared and anxious and excited and curious, all at the same time, which I find really interesting when you have that combination of feelings all mixed into one. So, I think of the three, I'd pick this one in the middle. Today we're looking at colour. We're going to look at the authors use of colour throughout the story. Now, Anthony Browne is a very skilled illustrator and he's thought very carefully about his use of colour in this text, which is why we're going to analyse it. Now, we associate different colours with different things, especially feelings and emotions. Some colours are naturally associated with particular feelings and emotions. We have three colours here. We have yellow, blue and red. I wonder if you can match them to the appropriate emotion. So, the emotions are beneath, anger, joy and sadness. If you have to match yellow with one of those three, blue with one of those three and red with one of those three, I wonder which you'd pick. So, pause the video, have a go and come back and we'll do them together. Okay. So, yellow is often associated with joy. It's a colour which is often used to represent it, represent happiness. It can also represent other things but it's often used to represent joy and happiness. Blue is a colour often associated with sadness. In fact, people often refer to the blues as strong feelings of sadness. You might say, "He's got the blues." which suggests he's feeling very sad. Finally, we have red. Red is associated with lots of different things. One of the things red is associated with is anger. Sometimes we see red used in conjunction with feelings of anger. There were also phrases which make use of colour, which kind of strengthen these associations between feelings and colour. The first is "green with envy". Now, envy is another word for jealousy. He turned green with envy at the sight of his little brother's ice cream. So, he's really jealous. Now, when we use this phrase we don't mean that somebody actually turned green. This phrase, "green with envy", is a phrase that suggests jealousy. So, the colour green is often associated with jealousy. He turned green with envy at the sight of his little brother's ice cream. Next we have "yellow-bellied". "Yellow-bellied" is a phrase which suggests that somebody is scared or cowardly. Somebody is scared or cowardly, you can call them yellow-bellied. His phrase is named after a type of bird that has a yellow belly and which is a bit easily scared. The yellow-bellied man hide behind the sofa. Somebody that's a bit cowardly and scared you might describe as yellow-bellied. The lion from "The Wizard of Oz" is a good example of somebody who's a bit yellow-bellied, a bit scared and cowardly. Let's do some text analysis. So, here we have some images taken from the beginning of the story. When I look at these images, I see one colour which stands out and which repeats, the colour which comes back again and again and again. Variations of a particular colour, that I would say comes back to the same colour. I wonder if you're thinking of the same one as me. I'm thinking of the colour blue. In the first image we have the kind of darkish blue, we have a couple of shades of blue. In the middle image we have a bluish green on the walls, and then you can see the carpet is a really, really deep blue. And in the final images, we have a mixture of blues. We have a dark bluish purple from the door. The wall is that same bluish green, and then again, the carpet is popping up there quite brightly beneath the table, has really rich royal blue. Now, I'd like your help trying to figure out why you think Anthony Browne has used so many shades of blue towards the beginning of the story. And I've started off your answer for you. So, you should count yourself lucky. I think Anthony Browne has used different shades of blue because... And I'm looking for a detailed answer here. So, I'd like you to think carefully about your reasoning and expand and build on it as you see fit. Pause the video now. Okay. I'm going to show you my answer to the question. I think Anthony Browne has used different shades of blue because the colour blue is often used to represent sadness and worry. We chatted about this at the beginning. We looked at those three colours, blue, yellow and red. We discovered that blue is often associated with sadness and worry. The question is though, why is that appropriate and pertinent now at the beginning of the story. In these pictures, the child is sad and worried because they had a nightmare and their dad is not at home. So, the overriding emotion here, in this part of the story, is sadness and worry. That's the main emotion. And therefore, to build on that, using the colours in the images, makes that feeling of sadness and worry even stronger, very clever technique by Anthony Browne. The use of blue helps create an appropriate mood, the sad mood, the anxious mood, the worried mood. How about here? Here we have an image of the child running through the forest, dressed in a red coat. Now, we're still thinking about colour. So, what do you notice and why do you think Anthony Browne has done it? We thinking about colour. What do you notice and why do you think Anthony Brown has done it? Pause the video now and have a think. Okay. Now, I'm not sure if you noticed the same thing as me, but I spotted that nothing in this picture is coloured. The only thing with any colour on it whatsoever is the child. The child's coat and clothes and face and hair, all have some colour, nothing else. The rest of the forest is grey. It's kind of the black and white greyish colour. Now, the question is, why has this been done? This isn't the only page on which this occurred, it occurred other pages too. We're looking at this page 'cause it's a really good example or representation of it. I noticed the only colour used in this picture is on the child. I think Anthony Browne has done this because he wants the child to stand out. They're suddenly in an unfamiliar, unclear world. The lack of colour helps make this clear. The world that the child has stepped into is strange and confusing and weird and unclear. I think Anthony Browne has tried to make that distinction really clear between what the child knows and what the child is familiar with, i.e. themselves, and what the child is completely unfamiliar with and the complete unknown, everything else, everything else in the forest. That again is my opinion of why Anthony Browne might have done this. Of course, we don't know, we can't get inside Anthony Browne's head. This is just a suggestion which I think could be one of the reasons. I wonder what you thought. But this next image we're going to compare, we're going to compared the two images. We have the child knocking on the door and then we have grandma lying in bed. Grandma's face and shoulders underneath the duvet in bed. Here, I've chosen four emotions for you to work with. I'd like you to match the emotions with the image. So, which image do you think matches each of these emotions best. You have joy, fear, relief and worry. Pause the video now and have a think. Okay. I've done this. I think fear and worry are represented in that first image. And then colour makes that even clearer. We still have these dark dull tone, these blacks and whites and greys and browns. And we do have the really bright red, the child's jacket, but that's it. The next picture I've chosen joy and relief. I think the bright yellows in this picture do a really good job of representing joy. Now, remember this is, the point of the story where the child had found the grandmother after this long and confusing journey. So, joy and relief definitely be the appropriate emotion. And I think they're represented here very clearly. We have colour bursting across the page. Everywhere you see on the page and we have bright, beautiful colours. Now, this is my final colour related task. And this is a strange one. You might be looking at this thinking, "Wow, Mr. Byrne Smith, what have you done to these pictures? Something's not right." Well, let me explain. I've taken every single image from this story and I've squished them all together. I've squished them together into the sort of timeline. What we're going to do is we're going to investigate the colours, the timeline. We're going to think about what those colours represent. Now, if you look at this as though it's a journey, a story, you can see that the colours change. I'd like you to think about the colours at the beginning, what do you think they represent. A mixture of colours? It's certainly quite bright so it's not dark and dreary and drab, we do have some colours. We have that really distinct bluish tinge which we looked at earlier. Then for the middle of the story we have mostly black and white. Now, we have a few little bursts of colour, can see the child's shoes, can see the red coat, can see the child's clothes. Other than that, we have lots of black and white. What do we think that could represent? And then finally, I may look at the end of this story. What can I say about that burst of colour towards the end? I'd like your... I'd like you to describe this colour journey from beginning to end and to think about what it represents. I'd like you to use phrases such as, at the beginning of the story, the main colours are... I think this represents... Using phrases like that I'd like you to describe the story from beginning to end. So, at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. Pause the video now and have a go. Okay. I would describe the colour journey as being bluish towards the beginning, which I think represent sadness and worry and anxiety. As the child enters the forest, and for the rest of the middle of the story, the main colour theme is black and white, with the occasional burst of colour. I think this represents the child's anxiety and fear and confusion while in the forest. Towards the end of our colour journey, I can see bright, warm, joyful colours, such as green and yellow. I think these represent joy and relief. The joy and relief the child felt when finding the grandma and father and mom. Here we have one last image to think about. This is the image of the red coat hanging on the tree which has a particular sort of meaning to it, especially in fairytales. A red coat with a hood. Now, we discussed this really briefly in the previous lesson. Let's touch on it again. "Little Red Riding Hood". Now, the colour in this instance is so important. It's in the name of the fairytale, "Little Red Riding Hood". About a young child with a red hood who goes on a journey to meet their grandma. And here we have that represented here. So, we have this really strong link being established between the original tale, the "Red Riding Hood", and our story here, which is clearly sort of a version of that tale. If you look really closely, you might spot something in the background, which draws another link to the original tale. Okay. Time to respond to the text. What did you think? Have you enjoyed working on Anthony Browne's "Into The Forest"? I like you to think about why you have or have not and I'd like you to be ready to explain that. Pause the video now and have a think. Would you consider reading more of Anthony Browne's books? He's produced a huge variety. So, if you've enjoyed this, there are lots to choose from. Why and why not. Okay. And that's the end of the lesson. Well done. You've done a really good job. We have looked at the quick introduction, analyse the text and responded to the text. That's the end of the lesson and that's the end of the unit on "Into The Forest" by Anthony Browne. Well done. You've worked really hard and you've done a fantastic job. You've completed the lesson, you've completed the unit. Bye.

To analyse the author's use of colour.

To analyse the author's use of colour.

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UnitEnglish / Into the Forest by Anthony Browne

English