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Three of my 8th grade students spent over two months making this 30-second PSA for our county’s Keeping It Safe Campaign. They first met a few days after school to brainstorm possible story ideas. When they finally settled on an idea, they started a Google Doc and continued their planning there. At one point, one of the group members went on a family trip to Paris. Instead of missing an afterschool planning session, she Skyped in from Paris using her iTouch.

This is the first film where students used the new Final Cut Pro X software we recently installed on a few of our machines. They took to this new editing software quickly. I asked one of the main editors if she could imagine going back to iMovie after using FCPX. She said “No, iMovie’s stupid.”

They met on a Saturday at one of their houses to film. Most of the editing was done during lunch, and a little bit during class. The film was due today by 4:00 and they were still editing it at lunch today. I think they are happy with the final outcome for the most part. People often don’t realize how hard it is to make short films. You have to plan carefully to come up with something good. I think they did a great job. The film is 30 seconds exactly before the credits roll.

Our children’s book is all done and now available on Amazon.com for $15.00. The book is a collection of seven original children’s stories all based on true life experiences. The theme of the book is transitions, so all the stories have something to do with an important transitional period. For example, one group created a story about  a character, Ned the Noodle, who experiences his parents getting a divorce. All the kids in this group have experienced this themselves.

Another group created a story inspired by their experiences of immigrating to the US. The stories went through a series of revisions until they were just right. The students edited their stories very carefully because they knew they were going to be published.

Through a mini-grant from our school PTSA and money we raise each year at our annual film festival, we were able to bring in local community artist, Arturo Ho, to work directly with the students on their illustrations. Arturo did an excellent job helping the students fine tune their illustrations. It was a real pleasure working with him.

This was a tough project but everyone seems happy with the way it all turned out.

Earlier this year, my film history class created flip books as a way to learn about the persistence of vision theory. I’ve shared our flip books the last two years HERE and HERE. This year, I thought it would be interesting to try and add sound effects to each individual flip book. Fortunately, a few student volunteers stepped up to the challenge. Noah and Jake have been coming in during lunch for the last two months meticulously finding sounds for each flip book. They also found the groovy background music that seems to work perfectly in some strange way.

Filmmaking is an art form that is all about executing a plan. Nic Weinfeld

One of my former students, Nic Weinfeld, Skyped in to one of my film classes recently to talk about the importance of storyboarding. Nic is finishing his senior year in high school studying film at the acclaimed Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. I’ve been in contact with Nic since the end of last year when he volunteered to come in to work with a group of my students on one of their films. He also attended our film festival and produced the very cool Film Festival Recap Video for us.

I love the emphasis Nic puts on planning during our conversation. Too often, students don’t take full advantage of the time they get during pre-production to carefully plan out their films. Hopefully, this Skype conversation will help reinforce the importance of storyboarding during the pre-production process.

Nic was great with the students. We hope to have him back in, either via Skype or in person, many times throughout the rest of the school year.

We started production on our silent films this week.

My media literacy class has been very busy creating children’s books over the last month. We’ve been fortunate enough to bring in local visual artist Arturo Ho to work with students on their illustrations. Like most big projects, it’s taking a bit longer than we expected. However, all the hard work and extra time is definitely paying off.

All the stories have a common theme of transitions. Students first did a series of writing activities where they explored different transitions in their lives. Everyone eventually divided up into groups based on their shared experiences. For example, we have one group doing a story about experiencing their parents getting a divorce. Another group is creating their story about moving to the United States from another country and the hardships that ensue. The stories are all metaphorical, but inspired by these shared life experiences.

Arturo is a real pro at getting students to create their best possible work. Not only is he a talented artist, he’s also a really nice guy. It’s been great having him in our classroom during this project. We plan to publish all our stories as a collection via the self-publishing site blurb.com. We’re also creating digital movies of the stories complete with narration, sound effects, and music.

Stay tuned…

My 7th period film class had the chance to talk with writer and director Doug Atchison recently via Skype. He wrote and directed Akeelah & the Bee, a film we watch and study in class. Many of my students from other periods also managed to get out of their classes to come and be a part of the conversation. We probably had well over sixty students in the room during the Skype call. I edited our forty minute conversation down into this fifteen minute video I posted here.
The students came up with some great questions for Mr. Atchison. They asked about the challenges of being a director, the costs of making Akeelah & the Bee, and how music is selected for particular scenes. They also asked Mr. Atchison where he gets his story ideas from and how he goes about structuring his films. He said that story structure is the most important thing about a movie. He also explained how many script writers start to write before they know where they are going. He said this is a common mistake.

He told students anything they encounter in life can be a movie. He urged them to try to make movies that they would want to see themselves. This is great advice: Create films about things that genuinely interest you, upset you, or excite you. Lastly, he said the most important thing is your story, and why you want to tell it.

(P.S. Check out our new door scenes. We posted them over a week ago on our website and I haven’t had a chance to write about them here.)

Tomorrow, we have some special guests visiting our 4th period media literacy class. David Hubbard and Marcie Wolf-Hubbard recently published their own children’s book, The Shiny Shell.  David wrote the story, and Marcie did all the illustrations. Since we’re gearing up for our own children’s book project, I thought it would be a good idea to invite a guest children’s book author (or authors in this case) to come in and talk with us.

I just got my copy of The Shiny Shell a few days ago. It’s a very engaging story about a young boy named Orion. One afternoon, he is swimming around in his backyard pool, when he suddenly finds himself in a new underwater world. He meets a friendly dolphin named Sleek, and Orion’s adventure begins. Sleek takes Orion on a strange trip in a “travel bubble” to “The Gathering.” Here, Orion meets a series of bizarre and beautiful sea creatures. The antagonist of the story is a shark-like creature named Snark. He has “two arms with three frog-like fingers,” and a “rotor-like tail which spins rapidly to propel it forward giving it the appearance of some misshapen torpedo.”

Throughout the story, Orion learns about the growing threat of pollution to the world’s oceans. There’s a reference to the island of garbage currently floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I actually had never heard of this so I quickly Googled it to see if it was true. Unfortunately, it is:

All the illustrations in The Shiny Shell have this beautiful dream-like quality. They are slightly hazy, but yet still clear enough to make out the characters and the actions. It will be interesting to hear how David and Marcie came up with their story, and how they decided what illustrations to create.

Visit theshinyshell.com to learn more about this children’s book and to download the ebook version.

My third year media literacy students just wrapped up their summer snapshot podcast series. This short project was inspired by NPR’s Summer Sounds Series (check out “Steel Drums” by 14-year-old DC resident Lila). Students had to create short audio stories about a memorable summer experience. It could have been something small, like a trip to the neighborhood pool, or something big, like witnessing the final space shuttle launch. Even though the podcast are short, the students were able to convey their experiences in a concise and thoughtful way. I’m very impressed, especially considering this was their first attempt at podcasting.

This is my second year teaching this media literacy class and I’m still getting familiar with the curriculum. A central theme that runs through the course is the importance of storytelling throughout history.  For example, we recently learned how troubadours traveled across Europe from the 12th to 14th centuries sharing current news, historical events, and stories through songs and music. Troubadours were, for a time, how many people found out about what was happening in the world.

Our school media specialist, Ms. Hack, created a Podcast Channel on our school’s website to share our podcasts. We also created our own iTunes page where people can download our podcasts and subscribe to our channel’s feed. We’re hoping other teachers in our school create podcasts with their students and add their work to our new podcast channel.

I see my students as modern troubadours. Using podcasting to share their stories and experiences with the world.

[[Click this button to subscribe to our podcast via iTunes]]

It’s hard to believe we’re already three weeks into the new school year. I’ve been meaning to update my blog since we’ve started school but haven’t had a chance until now. Back to school night is this Wednesday so I want to give an overview of what my 150 students and I have been up to the last three weeks.

In my Lights, Camera, Literacy classes, students are starting production this week on their door scenes. This is an engaging film assignment for beginning filmmakers borrowed from the American Film Institute. It’s a 60-second film that involves a character walking toward a door, hearing strange unknown sounds, then having a hard time opening the door.
My second year film class has been learning about the history of photography and early moving image devices. We looked at camera obscuras, zoetropes, praxinoscopes, and created sunprints (image above). Students also created flip books to conceptualize the persistence of vision theory. Next up: short 50-second films in the style of the early Lumiere Brothers and Edison Kinetoscope films.

My third year class just wrapped up their podcasts for our Slice of Summer series. Students created short podcasts about their experiences or memories from the past summer. The project was inspired by NPR’s Summer Sounds series. We’ll be sharing our podcasts this next week on our school website and uploading to iTunes with the help of our library media specialist, Ms. Hack. We’re also gearing up for a very cool children’s book project where we will be working with local artist Arturo Ho. We’re hoping to publish our children’s books as a binded collection via lulu.com.

We’ve had a very productive start of the new school year.