Teaching kids the art of filmmaking

A couple of weeks ago I gave workshops in making a shortfilm on a filmcamp for kids from seven to ten years old. Allthough I didn't have any experience in teaching, it went very well! Ofcourse it helped a lot that the kids were very enthusiastic about filmcamp and could hardly wait to get started. 

We started off with a game called 'Emotional Name', where all the kids are sitting in a circle and one kid starts with saying his or her name, but with an emotion, like angry, but it had to have just a little bit of anger. The second kid had to say his or her name a little more angry and so on and so on. The kid on  the other end of the circle has to say his or her name extremely angry. Like this we did a lot of emotions, like happy, afraid, sad, ashamed etc. This way the kids could already learn to act small or big. 

After this we did another acting game, called 'Tableau'. 'I want to see a bank robbery!', I said to the kids and then counted to ten. In the meanwhile everybody worked together to portray a bankrobbery, so if I open my eyes, I will be seeing a sort of 'painting' or 'photograph' of a robbery, or a circus, police-office or whatever it is I came up with. The kids loved these games and I was very surprised at what they came up with! They were so creative in many ways.

After the fun and games, it was time to think about the stories of the films they would be making in the afternoon. We started this off with an estafette, where they had to run to a piece of paper, write something down, run back to the group and tap the next kid on his shoulder so he could run and write something down. We made a contest out of it. The group who was able to write down the most ideas won! 

Now it was time to write our screenplay! The kids were divided in groups of six and had to choose a genre for their film. One group wanted to make a fairytale, one a slapstick comedy and the other an actionthriller. They had to write the story and then the other kids had to give feedback and ideas to make it better. When everyones screenplay was finished, we went on to the technical aspect of filmmaking.

By drawing examples on the whiteboard I teached them the effects different camera angles can have and what the

Most of the kids didn't really finish their storyboards. It was a bit to difficult for them. I decided they only had to draw the first scene. After this, we went over to the making of the props, which the kids really enjoyed!

I was really amazed by how creative and smart these kids were! And they we're so excited to make all their props, that they didn't even stop during their lunchbreak!

After this socalled 'lunchbreak' the kids had to make ensamble their own costume to transform themselves into clowns, princesses, adventurers, detectives and babies.

When one whole group was dressed up, they could look for their locations and start filming. Each group went their own way, with one of my assistents, and I came along with one of the groups to help them out.

The group that was with me, filmed almost everything outside. Jade, the cameralady, took her job very serious. I sometimes helped her out but did my best to leave her alone with this.

Around 3pm everybody had to come back so we could do the editing. All the kids were sitting in front of the screen while I was editing on the computer and showed them through the beamer how it was done. Afterwards, they all yelled 'Iris, go stand over there'. I was kind of afraid they were trying to prank me or something, so I didn't really wanna go. But after several times of the enthusiastic begs of the kids, I slowly did what they said. What happened next was só sweet! All the kids were running at me and huged me all at once. They thanked me for the wonderful day they had and I we made pictures of us all together.

It was a great experience to teach these amazing kids the art of filmmaking. We had so much fun together and I learned a lot from it. I'm up for it again next summer!

Iris