This presentation is reporting on an international collaboration using film production to produce and share knowledge on ocean literacy in upper secondary school and how the results are used in an ongoing Swedish project in social studies. In a Swedish context, the notion of aesthetic learning processes has been used to explain and promote media production as a valuable tool for exploring and producing both subject knowledge and media literacy, but engaging in aesthetic learning processes entails a degree of risk and it´s important to consider the complexity of media production when used to explore and communicate subject matter content. The project is using an activity theoretical model to map tensions and challenges between technology, media literacy and subject matter in the use of film production as a form of teaching and learning.