Storyboarding the Transformation from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

While reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, students discuss a psychological (versus monster story) interpretation of the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde. Students then imagine how they would depict the transformation to illustrate their interpretation of the event and then storyboard those interpretations. After sharing their storyboards with the class, students view transformation scenes in a variety of film adaptations of the book, discuss the interpretations offered by the adaptations and argue for their preferred adaptation. The lesson can be adapted to use with other novels that have been turned into films.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

 

• Stapleless Book Interactive
• Storyboard Printout

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

In Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom, John Golden suggests:

…film and literature are not enemies; in fact, they should be used closely together because they share so many common elements and strategies to gain and keep the audience’s attention. We know that for many of our students, film is much more readily accessible than print because of the visual nature and immediacy of the medium, but the very things that films do for us, good and active readers of literature have to do for themselves. (36)

By having students imagine how they would film a scene and then asking them to analyze how professional filmmakers have produced the same scene, we can draw on students knowledge of the “visual nature and immediacy of the medium” as well as engage them as active readers of the printed and visual text.

Further Reading

Golden, John. 2001. Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

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