Moving Image – Encouraging students to risk experimentation with film-making in the classroom
Students, new to editing and filming, may initially perceive the process as a complex one and foresee difficulties in using the technology with children. In making their own films, they may have had to overcome problems or become frustrated in dealing with the technology. Whilst they see the benefits of such work, they sometimes stop short of experimenting in the classroom. Film-making can be seen as too complicated and risky to take on within the context of a block teaching placement. We tackle this in two ways:
a) by encouraging students to look at examples of work that have been created by children and talking through the process through which this was achieved.
b) by providing opportunities for experimentation within short projects outside the constraints of a placement. (We find this approach useful when encouraging students to be creative in their uses of all types of ICT.
Examples of work
You can find examples of films made by children of different ages at the Creativity in Digital Video Awards website.
- Go to the Becta website and search for ‘digital video awards’. (The location of these often changes!)
- Here you can view examples of past winners to inspire students and provide a starting point for evaluation.
Such examples can inspire students and provides them with examples that they can in turn show to their pupils. However, it is hard to gain insights into the process through which these films were made and less confident students may find these examples intimidating. More helpful, perhaps, is to gain some insight into the way in which teachers have organised for children to create videos.
One approach is to ask students to make a film and then present them with a film made by children given the same brief. This means that students have a first-hand insight into the process through which the film was made and the stages children had to tackle. This also generates suggestions about how the teaching sequence might be adapted for pupils of different age groups.
One example, we have used successfully, is a sequence in which students have created a short film based on an excerpt from Louis Sachar’s ‘Holes’. We then show them films made by children using the same teaching sequence. Finally, we describe the process through which the children arrived at their film and discuss some of the problems they (and we) had to overcome in organising this filming. An account of the children’s filming of ‘Holes’ (and another text) can be found here.
So often students’ experiences within schools are highly structured by the curriculum, by the school and university demands. Opportunities for students to take complete ownership for a project may be few and far between. We have found that one of the most successful ways of engaging students with film-making is to provide opportunities for them to work collaboratively on film projects in school. Students develop a proposal for making a film in a school and negotiate the precise content and organisation with the school.
 
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