Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows members of the ORCA underwater research station and Neri, the heroine of the Ocean Girl children’s television series, watching a hologram of her dead father as he explains the failure of his party’s mission to Earth, the powers she possesses and the need for her to swear to complete their ecological mission. Mostly shot in close-up, the footage switches between views of Neri’s father speaking and of his audience responding, with an interspersed sequence of Neri as a young child falling into the ocean and being rescued by a whale.

Educational value points

• This clip belongs to the science fiction genre of imaginative texts, a genre that includes novels, movies, television series and animations. The scenes shown here also forge a strong connection with the superhero genre through the explanation of Neri’s extraordinary powers and her vow to continue her father’s mission to save the Earth’s oceans and possibly the universe.

• The hologram is the major plot device of the clip, allowing Neri’s history, powers and mission to be explained, thus setting up the story-line for the rest of the second series. Holograms are now well established as devices used in science fiction films and television series. Well-known examples include Princess Leia in Star Wars, Rimmer in Red Dwarf, and Vox in The Time Machine.

• Reverse angle and over-the-shoulder shots are used to emphasise the rapt attention of the characters to the hologram’s revelations. Reverse angle shots, as employed in close-up dialogue, involve the camera first adopting the trajectory of one speaker’s gaze and then switching to the other person’s. Over-the-shoulder shots, on the other hand, tend to exclude the viewer from the conversation and help create the impression of a closely connected group.

• Extreme close-ups of Neri’s face and eyes contribute to the poetic nature of many of the sequences in the clip, particularly the scene where tears well in her eyes and trickle down her cheek. Neri is played by Polish-born actor Marzena Godecki, who was 15 or 16 years old when the second series was filmed. Both photogenic and talented, she was chosen for the role from 500 young actors who auditioned Australiawide.

• The filmmakers’ choice of a humpback whale as the creature with which Neri communicates is perhaps based on recent environmental movements focused on saving the whale and scientific research that has revealed the sounds of humpbacks. David Suzuki has commented, ‘Although whale song is nothing like human language, I wouldn’t be surprised if some marine mammals have the ability to communicate in a complex way’ (http://www.physorg.com).

• Religious overtones may be seen in the clip when it is revealed that the universe’s ecological salvation lies in the teachings of a single gifted individual who has descended to Earth from space and who receives a prophetic message in a vision of her father. This story-line, the archaic language of the hologram and Neri’s vow appear to position environmental causes, such as saving the whale and protecting the oceans, as something close to a new religion.