Film in schools – the red carpet comes out

It’s over!

Our 5 month film making project is completed. We submitted our film online to the euro creator website and now, we wait!

The last month of school involved editing, editing and more editing! Some interesting things we noted were the use of lighting and how important it is for continuity. While, we were shooting the “dance scene”, I stupidly turned on the lights. This resulted in some part of the film being well lit and others not. I movie, on the Mac does resolve this issue slightly. You can click on a scene and enhance the colour, brightness and saturation. But, it doesn’t totally solve it. The editing team also decided that next year, it would be good to invest in a lighting kit, they suggested a HD camcorder for filming next time.
Once we had completed the film and were pleased with sound and the look of it, we submitted it onto the eurcreator and got to work on some other projects-the Fis film premiere of “School days-the film” had to be organised.
We are in a brand new and amazingly well resourced secondary school, namely the Athy College. We are also very lucky to have a brilliant principal, Richard Daly, who allows us to share in his school’s facilities. He has a cinema in the school! It’s a 60 seated with blu Ray and HD technology and stereo surround. He runs a monthly film club in Athy with his 5th year students.
The 5th and 6th class students designed an invitation and poster and we selected the best one. The girl who designed these worked on a guest list and kept a tally of who had RSVPed back to the school! She was great, she showed great initiative and came into me one morning showing me the revised list structure she had made at home, complete with tick boxes!

The Fis film premiere went really well, we showed the parents first and then other select VIP, students from the local schools came and enjoyed refreshments in the Parents’ room afterwards.

I presented the children with a DVD afterwards, their own 5 minute memory of a busy and fulfilling 5 months in school. And that’s just for me!

I could write a thesis on what has been learned.  True integration of the curriculum.  Problem solving skills. Team work. Patience. Technology with the MacBook.  Confidence. Digital storytelling. Scriptwriting. Storyboarding. Film appreciation. Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning.

Most of all, the learning that happens when you utilise the children’s own personal talents, talents that don’t show themselves in your average maths or gaeilge lesson. Yes, those subjects are important, of course but the skills I hope the children have taken with them are life skills. People skills and understanding how a project works. I hope it has made school exciting for them. I hope it leads them to think, to think about careers or interests they may not have thought about before. It might sound corny but I hope it makes them realise they can excel in anything they want to, if they put the work and enthusiasm in.

Thanks you, Fis!