BEHIND THE SCENES: The making of "They're Coming"

Following the plethora of questions on my Film Club's film They're Coming, I decided to make a short screencast of just how we ran the film club and did the special effects. 
This is a great resource if you are creating a film with a whole class, of any age range. Even the younger children in the club were able to be involved in the decision making every step of the way, while the older tamariki did more of the driving of finding sound effects, special effects and actually using the iMovie programme. 

This screencast includes: 

• Applying special effects
• Applying layers of sound effects 
• Using green/blue screen
• and making people 'disappear' 

If you have any other questions - please be sure to leave a comment. 

Also, if you want to see the film on the big screen again, it is being played during the 2016 Movies in Parks summer season. The film will be shown along with two others from the Manaiakalani Film Festival on Friday March 18th at Point England Reserve - a fantastic whānau evening. 

If you want more info on Storyboarding check my other blogposts. 

Storyboarding

Storyboarding your film festival film.

Last week I ran this toolkit on storyboarding to help other teachers in my cluster get started on their film making journey.  

So, you have an idea of what you want your film to be, but want help to plan what scenes to shoot, scripting, learn about camera angles and making your film look good on the big screen. 

Here are tips you can share with learners to empower them in the movie making process.

I really do hope you find the following links, tips and examples helpful in planning your class film.

Here is a basic storyboarding template I created to guide the planning process. In each box sketch the scene, where, who, angle, props etc.

Feel free to share it with your tamariki if you like. 

You'll also need these camera angles​ to get them thinking about the planning process. What and how to actually film what they want to film.

A great warm up activity is to watch some of ​2014 film festival's films and in groups get tamariki to discuss what camera angles were used, what was effective, and what was not so effective.

The following links are an index to my previous blogposts with tips for different types of filming and animation.

• Film making 101 tips
• ​Pukeko Animation - made using presentation - think 'flipbook'
• Make a song mashup - can use drawings or kids enacting lyrics also.
• Stop-Motion animation - lego, playdoh, drawings, figurines  

 

For stop-motion set up a tripod and get snapping. Import to iMovie, remove the 'ken burns' on images, change the time to .5 of a second (or less), add music, voiceovers and hey presto.

​Thanks, and comment below if you have any questions.

Regards

Stef

+Stephanie Parker

Film Editing 101

In the past weeks we have been learning to storyboard, shoot, and edit films. 

Some of the key tips I learned were:

• Never cross the line, when filming two characters talking. Instead film from the same side, but different angles. 
• Use a variety of shots. They all have a variety of effects. 
• Unless you are trying to make it cheesy, or it has a specific purpose, avoid the 'fancy' transitions. A simple cut between clips is what most film and tv shows use. 
• When cutting between scenes, it's often less jarring to do so on a movement (see Breaking News 56 seconds in)
• Use background music... it really eases any (bad) editing where it jars a little.

To make this into a reality my team of four collaborated to storyboard the storyline. This as it turns out is a really important part, to plan the scenes and shots you want to get for each before you even begin filming. 

Our team then spent 1hr filming, before individually editing in iMovie to make our own movies. This is my edit... enjoy