Six lucky Fairfield year 9 students with an interest in the Arts and Media attended a Watershed film making workshop today. The session marked the launch of the Electric December 2012 film competition and focused on inspiring young people across the country to go out an create a short film. The ‘Inspiration Day’ has been running at the Watershed for a number of years and Fairfield have always attended with a group of students. This year saw 10 schools from across the south west of the country participating in an all-day film production workshop. It was a fantastic session with a range of students from year 7 all the way up to year 13 Media and Film A-Level students.
The day started with a brief introduction from the Watershed team and two professional filmmakers. The students were challenged to plan, produce and present a short film in just one day – not even a day in fact, just 5 and a half hours! After being given the same script, a random genre and a bag of props each group went away to plan their production with support from 3rd year UWE Media and Film students.
Unfazed by the challenge that had been set the Fairfield students worked well during the planning stage with some excellent support from Harriett Graham (3rd year UWE Film student) and Mr Forrester, the Fairfield Multimedia Technician. Fairfield were given the ‘Western’ genre and set to work listing the key conventions and locations associated with it. A set of notes and a detailed storyboard were put together and the group were ready for action. There was one lucky escape worth mentioning – one of the students mistakenly listed ‘Cliff Richard’ as a famous Western actor (he meant Clint Eastwood). That could have made for quite an interesting Western film, or maybe soundtrack.
After a break for lunch the group came back together to shoot their planned production. The students really got into the spirit of the production, donning cowboy hats, Indian headdresses and plastic Smith & Western revolvers. A democratically appointed director expertly led the team during the shooting stage. All of the shots were really well composed and every member of the cast gave it their all, even if some of the accents were questionable in their early stages of development.
The final stage of production was putting the shots into a video sequence using the Premiere Elements editing suite. The cameraperson came to the fore during this session and the team comfortably got their sequence together within plenty of time to spare. The biggest difficulty seemed to be thinking up a name for the production but the Director managed to get a decision from the group in the end.
The day culminated in the screening of films from each of the 10 schools. There were some great sequences from all the schools that participated, especially the sci-fi year 7 group from Oasis Academy.
Click here to see the Fairfield screening: The Definition of Lous Final
Congratulations to the entire year 9 team, the film produced was of a very high standard and you worked extremely hard all day. Watch this space for the final version of Fairfield’s ‘Definition of a Lous’ sequence. Many thanks to the Watershed team and Harriett Graeme, for her fantastic support throughout the day. Thanks also to Mr Forrester for his support and input today.
