Making a Feature Film

And how to integrate this activity into all curriculum areas and involve

children so that all experience rich learning.

Learning Outcomes

• The children will learn that, just as in the workforce, a large project is able to be completed by many people playing integral roles, each contributing to the final product.

The A380 Airbus in manufactured in parts in many European nations and then transported to one place to be put together. Many thousands of contractors and sub contractors work together to create one aeroplane.

This type of manufacture is common, contemporary, and a model we can emulate when undertaking the making of a feature film.

Learning Outcomes

• The children will learn that no learning journey is too daunting as long as planning is in place and targets and goals are set and achieved.

It took 13 years and many hundreds of thousands of computer hours and millions of man hours to map every single chromosome in the human genome. The task was thought impossible – but was broken down into manageable pieces

Project goals were to identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, store this information in databases, improve tools for data analysis, transfer related technologies to the private sector, and address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.

Learning Outcomes• The children will learn that all contributions are important in any project and

that all are responsible for overall quality.The initial concept ideas for a ‘space Shuttle’ were tabled in 1954.By the mid 1960’s the US Airforce Began to conduct conceptExperiments.By 1973 President Nixon set asideFunding to begin development.Space Shuttle is the most complex Machine so far created. Hundreds ofThousands of people are responsibleFor its operation. When one mistake is madeThe consequences can be catastrophic.

Key Competencies

• THINKING – the children will be presented with multiple opportunities to use thinking strategies and tools to solve ‘real’ problems in context.

• USING LANGUAGE, SYMBOLS AND TEXTS – the children will be exposed to new language, the symbols of film making and production and textx to support their learning.

• MANAGING SELF – the children will be engaged in many activities that will require them to show self discipline, planning, preparation and careful execution of scripts to transfer ideas to video.

• RELATING TO OTHERS – the children will be required to work as individuals, pairs, small teams – all reporting to larger teams. Many children will be involved with mentoring others and all will contribute to assessment and quality control.

• PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING – All children will be involved in some important capacity in creating a feature length movie.

Curriculum LinksLiteracy

• Screen writing would be the focus of the writing forms taught for the first term. Screenwriting as a narrative form.

• We take the children through the process of having an idea, planning it, creating an ‘outline’, editing and rewriting after feedback.

• Once an outline is ‘accepted’ the children produce a ‘screenplay’ using all of the writing features associated with this form.

• Visual Language – that is the language of film – would be focused on. Telling narratives through visual story telling. Secondary to, but very important additional factors, are sound and how it influences narrative, music and how it influences narrative.

• The fact that many scripts are collaborative ventures would be stressed.

Curriculum LinksNumeracy

• The themes of the movie can be used in the language chosen to high light what ever part of numeracy is being taught.

Curriculum LinksArts

• Drama – the children learn techniques of acting to fulfil roles in the movie – feature or otherwise.

• Music – All music, Title, incidental, mood, thematic written and performed by the school.

• Fine art - the children create back drops and settings to support the story. Any animation required is conceived and models made by the children to support the story.

• Dance – I have spoken to Ian about incorporating one of those huge dance performances that we have seen on Youtube in places like Grand Central Station. This could be the focus of dance for an entire term or so, providing an authentic context learning a dance. This in conjunction with any other dance of stylized movement required for the movie.

Curriculum LinksTechnology

• The idea/Pitch play the role of the idea in the curriculum document.

• The outline functions in a similar role to the brief.

• In addition to the making of the movie – the finding resources, promotion and possible fund raising potential of the venture are factored in and distributed among the classes.

Curriculum LinksPE and Health

• The movie can, if necessary, be a vehicle to promote a particular healthy theme – not necessarily by way of the central narrative but as a sub theme. How this is achieved can be thrown open to either the classes or a specific team like the student health team. Product placement, subtle theme endorsement and any number of other methods could be investigated and used to promote a chosen message/messages.

Curriculum LinksScience

• If science is one of the chosen curriculum foci for the term we make a movie it is not an ideal one to integrate on more than a superficial level, however, the growing expertise of film making classes could be utilized to make documentaries in conjunction with what we are already doing.

Curriculum LinksSocial Sciences

• If this curriculum area needs to be integrated into making a feature film it can be done so by thematically relating the topic to the movie.

In Practice

• Each class would come up with story ideas and go through the outline process.

• Stories would be selected from each class to go to the development stage, where groups or the whole class would develop a script and have it ready for the final script selection.

• The editing process would be carried out by each class, groups would work independently on the raw footage, following the script – shooting script – and produce ‘rough cut’ scenes which they would put together themselves. In effect each class would produce a movie from the filmed footage.

• Each class [as with the school production] would have responsibility and control of filming one, or more, scenes to contribute to the whole movie.

• Featured acting roles would be auditioned for. All children would in some way or another feature ‘on screen’ in the movie.

• All music for the film would be written by and performed by musicians in the school.

In Practice

• The many aspects that support film making – make up, costuming, prop and model making can be distributed among the classes so that each has a role in pre production and production.

• Although each class puts together their own ‘version’ of the movies a group of gifted and talented children are responsible for the final cut containing the integrated media sources and filmed footage.