Yesterday the Oaklawn 5th grade team and I met to plan our Film Festival (to take place May 24th!), which will put a cap on the experience of a lifetime.
It has been an amazing journey to get to this place. We have witnessed profound acts of creativity, inevitable frustration, lack of resources, dwindling timelines, goofiness, necessary stick-to-itiveness, pandemonium and joy - aka all of the ingredients needed for an authentic independent filmmaking process!
I'm really proud of these kids. This was our first crack at this event, and the kids took it from beginning to end: researched a historical figure important to the American revolution, created a seed story using the facts they learned, adapted a screenplay from that story, drew storyboards, recorded audio, filmed their shot sequence, added music and edited their final project together. This is the ultimate inter-disciplinary, project-oriented learning experience. Dynamic and reliant on independence and taking initiative, it stretches the kids beyond their comfort zones in many ways. I have loved witnessing these kids rising to the challenges they face. Some of them lost footage and they all had to work around scarcity when it came to equipment and costumes. We asked a great deal of them in this initial Founding Folks Film Fest 1.0, and can't wait for a crack at 2.0 next year.
Once again, I must voice my gratitude to the teaching team, administration, key community members, and AIM for helping us to achieve our goals. It takes a great deal of organization, generosity, and adventurousness on the parts of many to get a project like this off of the ground.
...AND, it takes someone with a great passion to bring everyone together and dream. Thank you, Charis!
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