I needed to upload from two different locations, so here is the write up for the movie my English classes and I put together. Things I love about this project is the fact that it was student-driven and a fun yet different way to look at poetry.
This project was based on a portion of our poetry unit, which works toward satisfying Bellevue Public schools essential objective goals for reading (students will analyze what they read) and writing (students will write with focus, related ideas and supporting details).
The background of project is that each student in my two English classes chose three words that described themselves or their life and/or life philosophy. They then had to write out their three words and display them for the camera. The students were extremely excited to be involved in this project and can’t wait to see this final movie Tuesday morning. Our team will be using this project both during conferences for parents to see and as part of the spring honors assembly on the last day of school.
The movie itself starts with the opening credit slide. During this part of the movie I give a brief narration explaning the project and then allowed the pictures and movie clips to tell the rest of the story.
Pictures were taken of the students writing out their poems during class and preparing the classroom for film shooting. They had a lot of fun as you can see form their faces. I put the majority of the pictures in the front of the project and then one picture as a final shot at the end before the closing credits. For the pictures I included five pictures in one to make a collage, included text on that picture as well as an additional picture that appears as a dialog bubble. All pictures were cropped, and adjusted for lighting, color and sharpness. Transitions were added between each picture.
Movie clips were put in to order roughly by class period although there are a couple of students that were absent on "filming day" and they are added on at the end. Some of the students decided to show their faces while others just chose just to show their message. They did not speak during filming, but there was a bunch of background noise which I wiped and then added the music. Transitions were added in great variety between each clip. If I redid this type of project next year I would have each clip be longer as the transitions seemed to cut into the messages pretty closely. I would also use two separate tapes to film each of the classes so it would be easier to sort them by hour.
The song we chose, "Pictures of You" became a problem so I was forced to make an executive decision and chose "Movin' On" by the All-American Rejects to accompany this movie. My laptop computer, on which I do the majority of my work, would not read the CD we burned with our possible movie music on it. In the future I would save the music directly to my laptop and then would not have to worry about not being able to get to my music. The song I chose is still a great song and fits with the theme by reminding us that while live is lived in the here and now, that is just history waiting to happen. These students will be "moving on" soon, but hopefully they will take what they have learned, including what they learned about themselves, with them.
Closing credits came shortly after the final picture. I decided to do a dance theme because that's how I felt when this was all done and it was a"fun" theme. I did all the camera work and took all the pictures and I credited the music. I hope that I didn’t need to give credit to anyone else. I thought about crediting the class, but didn’t know a great way to do that. In summary, I tried to follow the rubric and hope that I have everything covered. It was a fun project to do and I thank my students for their enthusiastic participation.
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