Our official LF10 club t-shirts have finally arrived direct from Squidfire. I’m out of the building for the next two months on paternity leave so please see Mr. Stelzner to purchase your shirt. The shirts come in three colors, a variety of sizes, and cost $10. Get yours now, while supplies last!
The guys at Squidfire were kind enough to take some pictures of the silk screening process used to make our shirts. I used Animoto to quickly make the little video:
The Longfellow Ten is kicking off a stop-motion figurative language challenge. The idea is simple: Create a short, clear, creative stop-motion video depicting an example of a type of figurative language. For more details about this challenge READ THIS.
It’s rumored the Midwest Collective of the LF10 is wrapping up production on a number of new films. Stay tuned for further LF10 developments…
An extremely rare collection of silent films was recently discovered in the vaults of the United Artists Archives in Hollywood, California. What makes these silent films unusual is that they appear to be produced, directed, and edited by middle school students. The film shown above, The Fight for Love, is one of the examples from this rare collection. These films have caused a huge controversy among film historians because of disagreement about their authenticity.
Evidence from the films themselves show they were most likely created in the 1920s. For one thing, the music used in these films are old 78rpm cylinder recordings from the same era. The films also use the same camera angles that were prevalent in silent movies during this period, such as full body shots, two-shots, medium-shots, and close-ups. The characters are straight out of the silent film era: vagabonds and hobo muggers, pick-pockets, thieves, characters down on their luck, and jealous suitors.
The films are very scratchy, and have an aged film look to them that would be impossible to imitate. I, for one, think they are the real thing, and I’m amazed they were actually created by middle school students. Check out the rest of these newly discovered silent films on our class website, Watch Out!, and decide for yourself.
“If you are not interested in your story, I guarantee you no one else will be.”
The quote above is from Marilyn Horowitz, NYU film professor, writing coach, and author of the book we use in my middle school film class, How to Write a Screenplay in Ten Weeks (The Middle School Edition). Ms. Horowitz was kind enough to take the time recently to skype into our classroom and give my 6th and 7th graders a 40-minute lesson on storytelling and character development.
We’ve skyped many times in the past, but this was the first time that someone has Skyped into our classroom and literally taught a lesson. Ms. Horowitz had my 6th and 7th graders taking notes, and she did a great job connecting with the students. I’ve edited the 42-minute Skype lesson into this 10-minute video. I tried to capture some of the main points of the lesson.
I’m also posting a short audio clip that was edited out of the video. This clip has a helpful writing exercise Ms. Horowitz recommended to get the students thinking about their favorite stories. We’ll definitely try this out in class in the coming weeks as we start thinking about the stories we want to craft for our big movie project coming up.
The Longfellow Ten placed First Runner Up in the category of Best Educational Use of Video in the 2009 Edublog Awards. Thanks to everyone who voted for us! Hopefully, some of this recognition will help us in our efforts to recruit new LF10 members. Wanna join?
Our collaborative stop-motion project, The Longfellow Ten, has been nominated for an Edublog Award in the category of Best Educational Use of Video / Visual. Please take a few seconds and VISIT THIS LINK to cast your vote for us!
We here at the LF10 Headquarters are excited about this nomination. However, we’re even more excited that this nomination, and possible award, could help us in our ongoing efforts to recruit some new LF10 members. Wanna join?
The East-Coast Syndicate of The Longfellow Ten (that’s us) has been hard at work over the last few months cranking out new films. We’re on a mission to promote awareness of important academic terms and concepts through absurd stop-motion films.
The new film posted above, Onomatopoeia, was put together last week and involved about a dozen LF10 members. We have lots of new films currently in production. It’s also rumored that the mysterious Midwest Collective of the LF10 (Minnesotans I believe) are about to start posting some new films. Please stop by the official Longfellow Ten website and leave these young stop-motion film creators an encouraging comment!
I was recently interviewed by Jane Park from Creative Commons about some of the ways my students and I use CC licensed content in our classroom projects. We also talked about our recent Q & A Skype session with Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig. The interview is part of the ongoing CC Talks With… series. Ms. Park was especially interested in what motivated me to start using Creative Commons in my classroom in the first place.
As we all know, many students, even middle schoolers, are posting all sorts of content online, as well as downloading content. Yet many of these students have no idea that it’s illegal to download copyrighted material via peer-to-peer file-sharing sites like Lime Wire. They also are not clear on why they cannot embed copyrighted songs into their videos and post them on YouTube.
My students and I have been embedding CC licensed content into our various projects for more than two years now. We also post our own content online, some of which is licensed under different CC licenses. By introducing the idea of Creative Commons to students, and allowing them access to CC licensed content, teachers are not only tapping into a wealth of resources, but also helping educate students on basic copyright law.
CC Logo by Creative Commons
We’ve been learning about George Melies, the father of special effects, in my film literacy class. Melies was a French illusionist and magician, who after viewing the Lumiere Brothers early film projector in 1895, the cinematographe, started making his own films. He was an early pioneer in special effects. Many of his special effects were done in-camera. That means he used the camera to create the effects, not any editing devices. One of his most popular films was the sci fi production, A Trip to the Moon.
He invented the special effect known as “stop-trick.” This special effect involves turning the camera off, moving objects in and out of the frame, then turning the camera back on again, making it look like things appear and disappear as if by magic. The YouTube clip above is an example of the Melies “stop-trick” special effect. My students had to create short films in the style of the early George Melies films. Here’s an example of one of our films incorporating the Melies “stop-trick” special effect:
I wonder what George Melies would have thought of watching many of his films on YouTube today, over 100 years after he made them. Check out the rest of our short George Melies style films on our class website, watCH OUT!
Last year, Mr. Stelzner, a colleague of mine, and I started our collaborative after-school stop-motion project, The Longfellow Ten. We thought it would be fun, and useful, to have students create absurd stop-motion films about important literary terms. We also thought it would be helpful to share our films online, so others could use the site as a resource in the classroom.
We recruited a few other middle school teachers in other states to join our project. Kevin Hodgson, a teacher in Massachusetts, and his 6th grade students, head up the Northern Contingent of the Lf10. Ben Upton, a middle school teacher in Minnesota, jumped in with his students and started making stop-motion films about science concepts for the Midwest Collective of the LF10. Mr. Stelzner and I, and our students, make up the East Coast Syndicate.
In a little over a year, we have collectively added 52 stop-motion films to our official LF10 website. Students have created films that cover 43 different academic terms and concepts. We have over 170 comments on our various films, and over 4,000 page views to the site. We are hoping to continue to expand the project this year, and recruit new members. If you are interested in getting your students involved, or have any questions, please let us know. It’s not necessary to have any experience with stop-motion. A year ago, we didn’t have any experience ourselves!