Some readers of the blog may remember a visit we had from a local film making company called Xube and a researcher from the London Knowledge Lab – see the post here. The researchers were looking at the advantages and disadvantages of using iPads for film making in schools. Below are links to their final films – they both had the theme of ‘mysterious boxes’:
Like us, they watched a few short films and clips for inspiration on how to create tension and a mood of mystery. They looked at clips from familiar films like ET and Monsters Inc. and less familiar ones like these – The Red Balloon a French Oscar winner by Albert Lamorisse from 1956 and Room 8 a BAFTA short film winner by James W Griffiths from 2014:
We begin to look at how the animation in our last session – The Big Match – is designed and how it illustrates the voice-over story. We write some things down to do with colour, setting, story and sequence. Here are some of the things we notice in the first 40 seconds of the film:
the bright green colour (keeps coming back)
text from newspaper cuttings
drawn postcard of a city with a coffee stain (that Leonardo notices)
cardboard box background
a 3D McDonalds scene
cut outs of customers and bits of the shop flipping up in McDonalds
a video clip in a scrap of paper
little boy kicks the football out of the video into the animated sky, watched by the man in the moon
“Over / the / Moon” from magazine cuttings
the moon is the same shape as the football
photos mixed with black and white drawings
handwriting
sunshine and sky mean happiness
happy music then sadder music talking about his Dad…
sports shop in the sky
pacman eating the screen like a transition (Leonardo’s idea)
the concept of retro – meaning something that imitates the style of something from the past
Then we split up – each with an iPad and headphones – to watch, pause and scroll through the rest of the movie to pick up other design techniques for their own ‘making of a memory’.
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Here are other design elements we notice from the film:
And more:
panning shot across the railings, photo in background
photo of living room on newspaper, live action on TV
aerial shot of town
black outline of Dad and kid
extreme close-up of green tickets
rainbow & multiples of jumping kid
newspaper headlines
whistle blowing
crowds cheering
panning shot across stalls selling hats
bovril cups in newspaper
cross dissolves watching game
aerial, high angle shot to finish
Clara finishes early and goes to another room to record and then re-record her own story using Garageband. She’s brought a tiger soft toy with her to start collecting things to help tell the story of a trip to Dublin Zoo with her family.
Leonardo has brought a video he made on his phone – of him telling his story – but we have problems getting it off the phone. We’ll try again next week by blue toothing or using a cable.
Wizard 23 has also brought something in to share – his first football shirt. Mr. P is going to keep this safe till next week when we will have time to listen to his story and take photos.
Thanks to Nimbus for helping to set up the iPads with some efficient QR code scanning so that everyone had easy access to the clip … and then putting all the iPads away at the end!
I think we did an excellent job on our film ‘Run School Run’! The way we crafted the ending scene was inspiring to the whole school. The amount of comments I got from my class alone was brilliant! I think we worked together wonderfully to finish the film, and we all did a good job in making it look good (even us behind the camera)!
Great job to everyone in the Clip Club! Having watched our film yesterday, I can reveal that it is AMAZING! We all worked really hard to produce our final film which will be screened on Tuesday for KS2. I also watched the bloopers, which we will show after the film, followed by a Q & A session in the hall.
I’m still thinking about last week – analysing Rodrigo’s Blaas’ short animated film – Alma – almost frame by frame – it was an explosive session.
Bursting with great ideas and discussions about the intentions of the film maker, narrative, camera distance, positioning and movement, symbolism, sound, editing, artistry, mood and light…. Wizard23 and Dual2 wrote down many of the techniques used in Alma, some of which we may use in our own film to create drama and suspense.
Film techniques used in Alma to create drama and suspense
I particularly liked Clara’s suggestion that the front of the shop looked like a menacing face into which Alma was being drawn. Mr. P noticed that the ECU of the dolls’ head with Alma’s reflection inside it could symbolise her being inside the dolls’ head later. This idea comes back again seeing the inside of the shop out of Alma’s doll’s eyes when she’s sitting on the shelf.
The clipclubbers also made comments on the sound effects and the creepy music. Often sounds are heard before you see what’s making the sound. There’s a good point of view sequence of shots when Alma is looking for her doll and the camera moves quickly from left to right, as if it was her head searching this way and that. We noted that there were about 40 separate frames that made up the amazing 2 second sequence when Alma got ‘absorbed’ into the the doll. A couple of these frames reminded me of Gman’s flash photos of Wizard23 lying on the floor.
There are lots of activities we could follow up with here.. Some experimental scriptwriting/poetry: from the point of view of the next doll-victim? a conversation between the twin dolls when they see Alma coming in the shop? the thoughts of the little boy trying to escape? more on Alma’s confusion? something exploring the ‘thoughts’ of the shop itself.
If we had time we could also storyboard and film a reconstruction of a section of the film trying out camera shots, always bearing in mind that no shot must go to waste – there must always be a reason for a choice of shot. Another idea might be to improvise this – in silence – with them taking it in turns to be the director placing camera, people and props accordingly.
However, I think that the next session should be about discussing and starting to storyboard our film.
