Movie project

This spring we had a movie project about children's rights and dreams with our friendship school in South Africa. Project was funded by Finnish National Board of Education, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Arts Council of Finland. Finland - South Africa Association has been running the project with our school.

In the project children in our school (Mikkola school) and in Arethabeng school in South Africa made short films based on Convention on the Rights of the Child. First the pupils (or learners as they call pupils in South Africa) had workshops of how to make a film and then they made those films all the way from the beginning to the end all by themselves. I really enjoyed the project and I learned very much in the process.

The workshops started by making three-picture-stories of available pictures. At first it was little hard for pupils to make the stories only with three pictures and to have three main things in it: Interesting beginning, the middle and the surprising end. I think that the rehearsal gave the idea how to tell stories with pictures. In the workshops children also learned about different picture sizes, shooting angles and how to use the camera and the stand.

After that theory based learning children started writing their stories. Hanna Toiviainen, the project director who held the workshops, helped each group to make scripts of those writings. The real work started when children had to make story boards of their scripts. It demanded perseverance and a new way of thinking. How to tell the written story by film? How can the viewer know that a child is depressed or how to show that mother is favoring another child? Those kind of questions rose in making of story board.

Story boards looked like this. You had a screen where you drew what happens in the picture. Beside every picture you wrote the picture size and shooting angle, place of shooting, actors and description of what happens. Some groups had very hard time making the story board but some got hold of the idea very quickly.

When the story board were made the group had a final production discussion with Hanna. In that discussion the group had to show that everything was ready for shooting: Shooting places had been chosen, properties had been searched, scenes were practised etc. Then it was time for Action!

I wasn't in South Africa at the end of the workshop so I didn't see the shootings that were made there. Shooting the film was very exciting. Every group amazed me how well they had been prepared for the shooting. The beginning of shooting was always slow but at the end children acted like professionals as if they've done this thousands of times. For me it was a little hard to be just an observer. Many times I wanted to quide the group but soon I realized that the kids do actually better job without my advice. Healthy experience for me!


Here are some pictures of camera practise in Arethabeng. As you can see surroundings are very different from Mikkola school. We had snow, they had blooming trees.

The workshops were the same, theme was the same, the teacher was the same but the country, culture, language and living conditions were different. Can it be seen on the films? I'm eagerly waiting for the final movie in which are all the films from Mikkola and Arethabeng to be published.