Filming Friday

By -
One of the aspects of digital pedagogy that I have struggled with the most has been movie making. After a disastrous first attempt (our footage somehow missed most of the action) at the start of the year, I have slowly built up to create very simple films over the last few terms.

However, with the Manaiakalani film festival drawing closer, this week I have been facing my fears again. After being away for the majority of last week, I managed to film two scenes during my release on Friday after my students returned from technology. 

One of these scenes came out fairly well, although it was clear more footage was required for it to make sense. The other scene looked fabulous on camera, but when I watched it on my larger screen I noted several errors and again this needed to be re-shot. Fortunately, we were able to shoot this scene quite quickly yesterday afternoon.

A frame from our movie: Harriet Potter?


My learning so far:

1. Try and prepare everything as much as possible in advance and don't take too much time between shots. Although movie making is fun, the students will get restless if they have had to wait too long!

2. Meet with your team and make sure everyone is on the same page. We had an issue where one of the actors did not understand a joke that they were part of! I found holding a 'directors' meeting was very beneficial, particularly as these students were taking control of the filming and directing.

3. Watch out for continuity issues! We ended up filming one scene completely again due to continuity, but we had issues with the sun disappearing behind clouds during the session. We did not notice this at the time, but some parts of the scene appear colder than others.

4. Don't wait until the last minute! As I discovered, some scenes will take longer than expected and others may need to be re-shot. Also, if you are filming outside you will need to allocate some rain days

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Different Kind of Ending

By -
Image
As I approached the stage at my graduation on Friday,  I began to consider where I might be if I had not undertaken this degree. In fact, there was a chance that I might not have gone to University at all, as I am the first person in my family to gain a degree and one of only a handful from my old primary school.  Although I like to think I would have found a job that I would enjoy, it would be such a shame to let my dream of teaching go simply because I was not brave enough to enroll in tertiary study. It felt a little surreal returning to the University of Auckland city campus on Friday to graduate. I know that at other universities graduation is held at the end of the year, yet mine was held after I had finished my first term as a teacher. Although the celebration felt a little belated,  I really enjoyed catching up with my old classmates and I had a wonderful day. The highlight of my Graduation was when I went to dinner with my family as we discussed my ti...
Read more

Unpacking Our Reading Journey

By -
Image
Over the past two years I have been able to track a target group of students in my literacy group. The students are all girls except for F and G but these boys left in 2018.  I wanted to track this group closely this year as they came to me with reading ages between 8 and 9, where our learners seem to get stuck. In the first year, some were able to achieve accelerated shift, while others only made 6 months. Student End 2017 End 2018 End 2019 A 8.5 9 11 B 8.5 10.5 12 C 9 10.5 13 D 9 9.5 11 E 9 10 11.5 F 8.5 10 / G 9 9.5 / I focussed on those that had made the best shift and surveyed them to see what they thought caused it. F said that he enjoyed the topics that we were reading and that he was reading more. B and C had similar answers, with my hunch being that B made so much shift due to reading more at home. In fact, I gave B an extra text every week. In 2019 I attempted to give the students texts that they would find more interesting, and for the end of te...
Read more

Top Tips for Online Learning

By -
Image
With the world in lockdown every teacher is having to make adaptations for online distance learning. To help speed your learning journey,  here are seven top tips that I've curated from the experts Harry Fletcher-Wood and Dr Nina Wood at the  Education Hub . 1. Students attention spans are going to be far shorter . We know that there are many distractions for children at home and they are definitely not dedicating six hours of their day for school work. We don't want to overload parents either - if there is too much content and they have multiple children things get very tricky. A couple of hours of learning a day is great. In fact, my 11 to 13 year old students tend to clock out after about 90 - so I make the most of them! 2. Your learning activities need to be simple. We don't have the chance to meet face to face with students, to answer questions as they arise, so our tasks need to be easily introduced and explained. It is helpful to use a similar format each ...
Read more