Written by Malavika, Year 9
Last week, for Kaleidoscope Day, Year 9 were off-timetable for the whole day to take part in a Film Day, led by the One Day Film School. This was a really fun day with lots of hands-on activities and everyone had opportunities to take part.
We started with a refresher (Year 9 have done an online course from this group before) of techniques we could use in our films, and were set the challenge of making a film titled ‘The Surprise’ using only three shots – wide, close-up and medium. After break, we were introduced to the main point of the day – to make a film consisting of only 15 shots (up to 3 minutes), with three ‘Oscars’ available at the end of the day – Best Tech, Best Actor and Best Film. However, the film still had to convey a plot line, chosen from a selection of 5 very different scenarios to base our films on. We started to map out our script and planned our shots, and started to assign supervising/filming roles and cast our actors. Our group worked really well together to plan our final film and we had a lot of fun thinking up possible storylines together.
We started filming after lunch and collected the props we needed – making the films was definitely the highlight of my day as our group decided to film outside; this meant we could enjoy the sun whilst working on our project. We spent the first 45 minutes of the afternoon filming our pre-planned shots and then started to edit. We took great care to make sure the music and filters we chose were appropriate to the scenes it went with and that the cuts between scenes went smoothly – and it must have worked, because our group ended up winning the ‘Oscar’ for the film with the best tech!
As well as making our own, it was really fun to watch other people’s films and see how they interpreted the scenarios as well. Overall, I think that the Film Day was a really fun experience introducing us to the world of acting and film making.
