I showed the preview of our student’s movie to the grade 5 class and it generated a lot of excitement. Kids who had not shown any interest in the movie suddenly were asking how they could be a part of it. The grade 5′s used the Canadian books to select their characters and wrote their interview using the format that Mikole had used for the first 4 interviews. The grade 5′s gathered up costumes and props and spent most of last week filming their interviews. Today we are editing the movie and filming the final scene which will end with a Canadian cake made by our student’s EA.

We plan to have a “viewing” party sometime in the next two weeks with popcorn.

We have completed a cool preview to the movie and I am hoping to be able to post it here. It has taken some time for me to learn the newer version of iMovie. It has a lot of great features but it takes time to play around with them and learn how to use them. Mikole’s preview

We made great progress last week and have filmed the beginning sequence of the movie and the four interviews. Today we reviewed the clips with the student and asked what he thought we needed to do to enhance the movie. With his EA, they gathered some props and costumes to re-film some of the interviews. We found some google images of the characters to into the movie.

Our student has scripted 4 interviews and has selected the classmates that he would like to “audition” for the roles. We have created an opening sequence for the movie that will involve others in the grade 5 class but have had difficulties with arranging class time and having our EA available. Our grade 5′s are transitioning to middle school so this is a busy time of year for them, I’m hoping we can get filming next week and save at least 2 weeks for editing.

We created a paper template for our student to begin laying out his plans for the movie. He planned his opening scene, the four characters and possible endings. Our student is no longer feeling very anxious about this project and is now enthusiastic and asking when he can work on it. Yesterday he began writing the script and is thinking about classmates that he would like to “audition” for the roles. We are hoping to begin filming the first week of May.

Practice for movie

We have experienced multiple interruptions the last two weeks with the strike and then 2 power outages at our school this week. We have obtained a copy of revelation Sight and Sound and have begun reading with our student topics such as; how to become a film maker, how films are made, working with sight and sound, camera techniques and digital storytelling.

Work has been steadily increasing on the research for the movie as we have been studying the biographies of the following famous Canadians: Laura Secord, Tom Thompson and Alexander Graham Bell. Many interesting facts are being discovered as well as our “cast of characters” has been expanding. This past week we had a discussion with the grade 5 class and told them about the upcoming movie production and asked  them to think about how they would like to be involved.

We have had technical difficulties with our Flip Mino but are hoping to get that resolved soon, in the meantime our student has been practising his “director” skills by using the school Flip and recording a recent dance performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

After some unexpected illnesses in January amongst our team we are getting started with our Canadian Identity Project. Our student selected a few significant Canadians that interested him and begun research on Laura Secord. He was feeling nervous about this project so we’ve had him out around the school practising with the Flip Mino taking videos and getting comfortable in his role as “movie director.”