On June 3rd, 21 children from the Powys writing squads worked with Tom Barrance and poet Francesca Kay to create poem films at the Hay Festival. They only had four hours: an hour and a half in the morning to learn about filming, shoot their images and write the first draft of their poems; and two and a half hours in the afternoon to refine their poems, perform and record them, edit their images to the poems and screen them. Funded by Academi.

Film 1: Oliver, Adam C, Adam B, Alex, Morgan
Film 2: Beth, Angharad, Emily, Arthur, Dan, Matthew
Film 3: Chloe, Aine, Evie, Issie, Caitlin
Film 4: Aisling, Abigail, Annie, Emily, Rosie

See a full report and more films

For Soundtrack 2009 Tom Barrance delivered an interactive workshop in Cineworld, Cardiff which was linked by satellite to Scala Prestatyn and Aberystwyth Arts Centre. He also delivered hands-on workshops in which students created scores for a suspense sequence, and made montage films (edited to their own music) using Garageband and Final Cut Express.

This project involved Bettws High School, Newport and its partner primary schools. An able and talented Year 7 group combined learning about film language and film-making with work in French and Welsh, using professional video compositing techniques (including multiple video tracks and keyframing). Children then went back to their Primary schools to help Tom Barrance run film workshops (editing a suspense sequence as a classs, then creating a soundtrack in groups).

Funded by the Film Agency for Wales and University of Wales Newport First Campus.

Over the Spring half term we worked with young people (12-18) at Waterhall Youth Centre in the Fairwater Communities First area in Cardiff, with support from the Communities First team. The young people learnt about funk music from Kev Sayer of Community Music Wales, and went on to create their own short pieces of music using Garageband. Tom Barrance showed examples of how to break a scene down into its elements and use different camera angles, looking at framing, pattern and shape’ He also looked at montage and editing to music, using title sequences and an excerpt from Vertov’s ‘Man with a Movie Camera’. The young people then created their own films which they edited to the beat of the music using Final Cut Express. In this example, made by four girls, they used multiple video tracks and added transitions and effects.

Funded by the Film Agency for Wales and South Wales Police.

Tom Barrance worked with Neil White of Community Music Wales to provide workshops as part of the Soundtrack film and music festival in Cardiff Bay on 27th and 28th November.

In this example from Friday’s half-day workshop, GCSE Media Studies students from Ysgol Rhydfelen (Garth Olwg) used Garageband to compose a score for a short film sequence (made with footage from our editing practice DVD Editsense.)

On Thursday, students composed a score for the sequence, and then used the music as the basis for a new film which they shot around the Bay and edited using Final Cut Express. This example is by A-level Music students from Ferndale Comprehensive.

The task was to work in groups to write poems based on a silent montage film. Next, they recorded their poems as performances. The next step was to work out how to create a completely new film, with new images, based on their poem. They went out to film the images in Cardiff Bay before returning to edit the films with iMovie.