By Dan Farrell, Co-founder and Director, Sparks Film School
Filmmaking and media creation aren’t just alternatives to traditional literacy. They’re powerful tools that can enhance literacy development.
Let’s not pretend: screens dominate our daily lives. Today’s digital world is so different to that of 10 or 20 years ago, and yet, an age-old concern still remains. Everyone worries about their children’s reading habits.
But what if the very medium we fear is competing with books could actually be the key to unlocking deeper literacy development? Filmmaking and media creation aren’t just alternatives to traditional literacy. They’re powerful tools that can enhance reading, writing and critical thinking.
The Multimodal Nature of Modern Literacy
Literacy in the 21st century extends far beyond decoding text on a page. The National Literacy Trust recognises that literacy now encompasses the ability to read, write and critically engage with multiple forms of media. When young people create films, they engage with what researchers call “multimodal literacy”, the ability to understand and create meaning through combinations of text, image, sound, and movement.
Research from the British Film Institute’s education programmes demonstrates that students who engage in filmmaking show measurable improvements in traditional literacy development. The act of storyboarding requires narrative structure understanding. In Sparks Film School sessions, we encourage our filmmakers to think carefully about the narrative function of each shot. By selecting a shot type for a film, we are making choices about what information we want to convey to our audience, and the types of words that shot might have equivalence with. For example, a close up is great for communicating emotion, and evoking emotions for your audience, whereas a wide shot is brilliant for describing details about the setting and establishing the world of your story. Scriptwriting demands dialogue that sounds authentic. Editing teaches the grammar of visual language: how shots connect, how pacing creates meaning and how transitions guide understanding and the passage of time.
To make a film is to make countless decisions about your story: how to manipulate narrative, character, pace and perspective.
From Passive Consumers to Active Storytellers
The transformation happens when children move from consuming stories to creating them. A student who struggles to engage with a novel might discover their storytelling voice through a camera lens. The filmmaking process naturally scaffolds literacy development through multiple entry points.
Consider the pre-production phase: students must research their subject, develop characters, and structure narratives with clear beginnings, middles and ends. They write treatments, scripts and shot lists, all forms of purposeful writing with immediate, tangible outcomes. Unlike abstract writing exercises, these documents serve real functions in bringing their vision to life.
During production, students become close readers of their own work and the world around them. They must “read” locations for visual potential, interpret performances, and make countless decisions about how to communicate meaning without words. This visual literacy development directly supports traditional reading comprehension. Both require inferring meaning, understanding subtext, and recognising how elements work together to create a whole.
The Editing Suite as Writing Workshop
Editing is rewriting. Students learn that their first cut is never their final cut, the same lesson that transforms struggling writers into confident ones. They discover the power of cutting unnecessary scenes (editing for concision), rearranging sequences for clarity (organising ideas logically), and adding sound or music to enhance emotional impact (choosing precise language for effect). Video editing also allows the abstract to become tangible. With a few clicks, an editor can create a flashback and experiment with non-linear narrative structure.
Educational research published in Literacy journal found that students engaged in digital video composition demonstrated significant gains in their ability to revise written work. The visual and immediate nature of video editing helps students understand abstract editing concepts that often remain elusive in traditional writing instruction.
Supporting Learners with Special Educational Needs
For students with dyslexia and other learning differences, filmmaking can be genuinely transformative. Traditional literacy instruction often highlights what these students find difficult, but media creation reveals strengths that text-based learning can obscure.
Dyslexia and Visual Storytelling
Many individuals with dyslexia possess exceptional visual-spatial abilities. They think in pictures rather than words. Filmmaking harnesses this strength. When storyboarding, students with dyslexia can plan complex narratives visually before facing the challenge of writing dialogue. The visual script becomes a scaffold that supports later text-based work.
Research from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity highlights that many successful filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg and Guy Ritchie, are dyslexic. Their success isn’t despite their dyslexia but often because of the unique way they visualise stories. Filmmaking can be used to open the door to storytelling for those that might find writing to be challenging.
Multisensory Learning in Action
Filmmaking is inherently multisensory. It combines visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learning. This aligns perfectly with structured literacy approaches like Orton-Gillingham, which emphasise multisensory instruction for students with dyslexia. When students physically move through blocking a scene, they’re using their bodies to understand spatial relationships and narrative progression. When they record and manipulate sound, they’re engaging with phonological awareness in a meaningful context.
Reducing Cognitive Load and Increasing Engagement
For students with working memory challenges, filmmaking breaks complex literacy tasks into manageable chunks. Rather than holding an entire essay structure in mind while simultaneously managing spelling, grammar, and handwriting, students can focus on one element at a time: first the visual story, then the dialogue, then the refinement.
The collaborative nature of filmmaking also provides natural support. Students can take roles that play to their strengths. A student who struggles with writing might excel at cinematography or directing, while still participating in the storytelling process and absorbing narrative structure through practice.
Building Confidence Through Success
Perhaps most importantly, filmmaking allows students with learning differences to experience success in literacy-adjacent activities. A student who has struggled with reading for years might create a compelling three-minute film that moves audiences. This success builds the confidence and motivation necessary to tackle traditional literacy development challenges with renewed determination.
The Narrative Thread: Story as Universal Language
Throughout all of this, story remains the constant thread. Whether carved in stone, written in books, or captured on film, humans have always been storytellers. Filmmaking doesn’t replace traditional literacy development: it expands it and makes the fundamental skills of narrative construction accessible to more learners through more pathways.
When we teach filmmaking, we teach plot structure, character development, theme, symbolism, and perspective. We teach students to consider their audience, to revise their work, and to communicate ideas clearly. These are the same skills we aim to develop through traditional literacy instruction, but filmmaking makes them visible, collaborative, and immediately rewarding.
Practical Implications for Educators
The evidence suggests that integrating filmmaking into literacy instruction isn’t just beneficial, it’s essential for reaching all learners. Schools should consider:
- Cross-curricular integration: Using film projects to support literacy development across subjects
- Inclusive design: Ensuring filmmaking opportunities are available to students of all abilities, with appropriate scaffolding
- Assessment evolution: Recognising film projects as legitimate demonstrations of literacy competence
- Professional development: Training educators in both filmmaking techniques and their connections to literacy development standards
Expanding Our Definition of Literacy
We should all be willing to expand our definition of literacy to match the world our students inhabit. In a media-saturated culture, the ability to critically analyse and create visual narratives isn’t supplementary to literacy, it’s central to it.
By embracing filmmaking as a literacy development tool, we don’t abandon traditional reading and writing. Instead, we create more pathways to those skills, reaching students who might otherwise remain disconnected from the power of storytelling. For students with learning differences, these alternative pathways aren’t just helpful, they can be life-changing.
The stories our students need to tell are waiting. Sometimes they need a camera, not just a pen, in order to tell them.
Dan Farrell is co-founder and director of Sparks Film School, which has trained over 15,000 young filmmakers across 35 locations since 2010. He recently served as a jury member for A Film Teens Fest 2025 and regularly speaks about creative education and youth development.
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