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My first year film classes are getting ready to start their movie projects. The biggest challenge for the students is coming up with interesting story ideas. I emailed my former student, Nic Weinfeld, to see if he would be available to Skype with us next week to offer some advice on coming up with original story ideas. In his reply e-mail, Nic offers some helpful tips that I’m sharing with his permission:

For coming up with stories it is always important to think about what you are trying to say.

For example, the message, “change is good” may be showcased through a political leader stepping down after some conflict, or a mother hiring a new baby sitter. Once you have a message, or how its more commonly referred to in film as a “Spine”, the next steps are easier.

Also, it’s important to remember to keep it simple. Make sure your story has minimal characters, minimal locations and is really honing in on one character, one event and one change that he/she undergoes.

Finally, you must plan it out, thoroughly, so you can see the gaps in your story. You need to make sure each scene is doing something and moving your story forward.

I can add more when we actually Skype.

The picture above is of the large 400-seat movie theatre at The American Film Institute. This is where we will be having our 4th annual film festival on May 31st.

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.

Well, we’re already two weeks into the new school year and we’re off to a great start. The picture above is just one of many sunprints students made this week in my two film history classes as we learned about the history of early photography. By making their own sunprints, students better understand the process of how light can interact with chemicals to create photography.

The image below, View from the window at Le Gras (1825), is one of the earliest surviving photographs from Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Niepce called his process heliography, which means sun writing.This is my third year teaching these new middle school film literacy and film history classes. The classes are part of a program developed by a very creative instructional specialist for visual literacy in my district. This year, we’re offering another new class called Media Literacy.

It has been fascinating teaching these classes because I’m learning new things along with my students. I’m looking forward to another crazy year. We have a lot of very cool projects in the works!

We’re in the middle of our big film project right now in my film literacy classes. Students have spent a good amount of time in pre-production brainstorming story and character ideas, writing scripts and creating storyboards for all their scenes. It appears all their hard work is paying off. They have been very focused, prepared and engaged all week filming their movies. Students used Google Docs again this year to collaboratively write their scripts. All of the individual scripts are linked in the sidebar of our homepage on our class website, Watch Out! I’m always amazed to see how efficiently students use Google Docs, and communicate with one another as their scripts evolve. We use a script writing structure I’ve written about a few times before called The Mythic Journey Map, developed by NYU professor Marilyn Horowitz. It’s very helpful for the students to have a basic structure to follow as they hammer out their scripts.

It’s exciting watching them enthusiastically bring their scripts to life. I can’t wait to see how they all turn out. (7 weeks until our 2nd annual film festival. YIKES!)

I have a whole new cast of crazy 6th and 7th graders this year in my film literacy classes. This past week, one group asked if they could do the classic “pie in the face” scene for the ending of one of their film assignments. I said, “Sure, why not?” Next class, they show up with a pie crust and a can of whip cream. “Can we actually do it Mr. Mayo?”

Last week, I asked my six film literacy classes to create a list of classroom rules and expectations for themselves and for me, their teacher. They came up with the standard list of middle school rules for themselves: Raise your hand during class discussions, respect each other, keep your hands and feet to yourself, don’t shout out, etc.

I like the list of expectations they collectively came up with for me:

Student-Created Expectations for Mr. Mayo

1. Be prepared when class starts
2. Treat all students the same (no favorites)
3. Help us when we need assistance
4. Don’t rush us
5. Encourage us
6. Don’t talk for long periods of time
7. Don’t yell too much
8. Be nice to us
9. Don’t judge our opinions and ideas
10. Listen to our ideas
11. Basically, be a cool teacher

I’ve been so busy with end of the year stuff that I haven’t had a chance to blog about our film festival we had two weeks ago at the AFI theatre. Over 200 people showed up to watch the films my 6th and 7th grade film literacy students have created this year. It was a very exciting event for all of us. Marilyn Horowitz, the author of the screenwriting book we use in class, came all the way from New York City to attend!

This was truly a community event. My students, their parents and families, other teachers and school administration all came together to help make our first annual film festival a huge success. We were able to raise over $1200 through donations. We donated $500 to AFI (see large check above), and will spend the other $700 on new equipment for our program next year. (like more Blue Snowball mics!)

To watch some of the films featured in our film festival please visit our website, Watch Out! I hope we are fortunate enough to have another film festival next year.

Photos by Dan Gross. Used with permission.

My students and I have been working overtime in preparation for our upcoming film-festival at a local movie theater. The 30-second cell phone video shown here was created this week by VHD, of LF10. It’s part of a series of short videos we’re creating to use in the film-festival.

We’re also creating an original three-minute introduction, and a short documentary about making movies in middle school. We have two weeks left to wrap it all up!

What: Film Festival
Where: A beautifully restored movie house (pictured above)
When: June 1st
Who: My 6th & 7th grade Film Literacy students (& LF10!) & their families/friends
Why: To share all the films we’ve created in our classroom this year!

We have three weeks to complete all current productions. It’s major crunch time. Can we pull it off?

“It’s a question of giving yourself permission to use your imagination” – Marilyn Horowitz

One of my 6th grade film literacy classes was lucky enough to participate in a Skype video-conference with Marilyn Horowitz, renowned screenwriter, filmmaker, and NYU film professor, about the challenges of making original films. Ms. Horowitz also wrote How to Write a Screenplay, the book we are using in class to learn how to write and structure our scripts.

A few days before the interview, students brainstormed a list of questions they had about the whole film-making process. They came up with some great questions. The interview lasted for over forty minutes and it was very helpful for all of us.

One of the many things she told us during our conversation was you have to believe in what you are doing. When you’re filming, you have to be convinced that the story you are telling is absolute reality. She also told to us about the importance of composition, framing, and trying to make your movie beautiful.

I’ve edited the audio from our interview and posted the different questions and responses below as mp3′s. Ms. Horowitz has agreed to Skype into our classroom again next month to give students feedback on their final productions. Thanks Ms. Horowitz!

The Mythic Journey Map

You want simple stories and well-developed characters.

How do you introduce new characters?

Composition, Framing and Acting Tips

Composition, Lighting and Basic Camera Work

Group Conflicts and Creative Control

You have to treat the setting as a character.

Acting and Improvisation Exercies

How do you come up with a good title?

How do you pick a setting that is right for your movie?