7th Grade Goes Hollywood

In April of 2005 Lakeside 7th graders went to the Movies!

LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!

Under the direction of teachers Susie Mortensen, Vita Cohen, and Erik Gearhart, 7th Grade English students took on a project that divided them into production teams of four whose job it was to produce two movies from scripts written in class. Starting with exploration of character and story development, students began writing scripts. Each team chose two scripts to film using digital camcorders. Drawn from the four members of the group, every movie had a director, actors, and film crew. Most of the filming took place at school; the video was downloaded to the student editor's laptop and the final film was produced using Movie Maker 2.

Below are links to all the videos produced for this project, 20 in all. As you will see, there was quite a variety of topics and a great deal of talent on display, both in front and behind the camera!

Here are links to all of the finished movies (log-in required) :

	Academy Awards May 2, 2005
After viewing the finished movies, each English class will vote on the "best" in the following categories: Best Cinematography, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Film. We'll announce the winners here after the voting has been tabulated!

Production Roles

Director
A prime job of the director was to get the actors to characterize their roles. They spoke with each actor about his/her projection, enunciation, inflection, posture, facial expressions, and gesturing. They were also responsible for deciding the blocking the performance, and overseeing the costuming, filming, and editing. The director decided which scenes needed to be re-shot. Best of all, the director got to say, “3-2-1......ACTION!”

Film Crew
The film crew accentuated the tone of the film by doing the filming and editing. With the help of the director, the crew decided when to zoom, which camera angles to use, which scenes needed a re-take, what music to add, what transitions were sensible, and so on.

Actors
Actors had to memorize the script and blocking and bring their character to life as finely as possible.

If you're interested in seeing the actual assignment and the other materials used in completing this project, check out the following links (.pdf files)