Year One children can make movies Part Two

As promised here is the second installment.

We discussed what Narration is and whether we needed it or not. The children then discussed what sort of things our narration would be made up of. This is where our script came in handy. It helps refocus and keeps us all on task.

The children watched the rushes and made comments about how hard it was to hear people walking into school and how you can really hear someone reading. This introduced the idea of sound effects. After I watched the making of Troy I realised that every sound is a sound effect so we discussed how to have the sound of walking. The children said we should go out and walk. This was interesting in itself as the first couple of attempt sounded like stomping and marching when we played them back. On the third attempt we were pleased with our sound and moved onto the next effect, Children talking and laughing. For this we just stood around in the classroom and told each other a funny story. For reading a big piece of paper opened and closed repeatedly gave a nice page sound. I was impressed with their patience in waiting for the bell to ring so we could capture that sound as well.

The narration was done by a select group who volunteered.

NB: I believe it is important to give the chance for children to choose not to take a high focus position with this type of first attempt. Since the children have watched the final product there are more who are interested in having a go.

I then took all the raw film and sound home and edited it with iMovie. Again you can use any software, I just happen to have this one. Using Garageband the incidential music was composed.

I then copied the final product back to the DV camera. From there I copied the film to a VHS player at school.

And we all have a grand preview today and showed the children next door in Room 2