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

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.

Ffilmschool 2 began in Summer 2007. Here, rather than just working in schools for a week (as in Ffilmschool) we worked with one group of schools in the Briton Ferry Communities First area in Neath Port Talbot over a year. This project was supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Wales; the Film Agency for Wales; and Neath Port Talbot CBC.

You can download the Ffilmschool 2 research report here.

The aim was to provide the children with sustained opportunities to build their film-making skills and to experience non-narrative and non-mainstream films. The project also included several days of in-service training, as we wanted to build the teachers’ confidence and familiarity with using film in the classroom.

Each class used 6 MacBook laptops and cameras, so that children could work in groups of normally no more than 5.

After some very short introductory projects in Summer 2007, we went on to work on poetry and film in the Autumn term, working with Cardiff performance poet Lloyd Robson. In these projects, Lloyd started by looking at poetry-writing techniques and I then looked at how images could be used as metaphors, before moving on to writing poetry, practising performance, and film-making.

This is an example from the adult writers’ workshop ‘Voices in the Vale’: here, we had shown the writers a short montage film which they used as the basis of a poem, recording their poems into iMovie HD. They then filmed and edited completely new films based on their poems.

Paula’s film

In the Spring, we focused on film and music, working with tutor Neil White from Community Music Wales.

We looked at examples of how sound and film worked together, using films such as Koyaanisqatsi, Bande à Part, and Man with a Movie Camera, before giving the children a film-making task.

In this example, from Llansawel Junior School, the children had been given a selection of closeup video clips to which basic motion had been added. We discussed what the clips might mean in terms of emotions, and then played the children a variety of unfamiliar music clips ranging from Miles Davies to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, and asked the children what emotions or feelings those clips might evoke – and which music clip would work with which image.

Next, they chose four of the seven clips and created a piece of music (using Garageband) to go with those clips. Finally, using iMovie HD, they edited the clips to the music and added their own effects.

Volcano

Finally, in the Summer term it was up to the teachers to decide what kinds of projects they would like to do. In this example from Brynhyfryd Junior School, the children’s task was to depict a kind of movement through music and film.

Falling

In the example below, from Ynysmaerdy Juniors, the task was to film a place in the local area and then to devise and record a script imagining conversations which could have taken place in that location.

The station

This group from Melin Juniors worked largely independently to produce a film giving their views about the local area.

Melin Rap

This final film is from the Year 7 class at Cwrt Sart Comprehensive School. These children wrote a monologue and composed music depicting their local park using metaphors.

The Park

Most of the projects lasted around a week. With each project, we started by giving the chidren an overview of the basics of film language, and gave them some simple practice filming and editing activities to build their skills.

Here are two poem films by children from Pontrhydyfen Primary School, in the Afan Valley Communities First area in South Wales. (The Afan Valley activities were also supported by Neath Port Talbot CBC.)

Each group in the class chose a place in their local area to do a ‘personification’ poem (it was the place which was speaking, as if it was a person). They recorded the poems into iMacs (using iMovie HD) and then went out to film images to explain the poems, editing them to match the soundtrack.

Castle

Bodies

In the Welsh language project below – from Ysgol Saron, Carmarthenshire – the class adapted the legend of how the local lake of Llyn Llech Owain was formed. (A knight returning from the wars accidentally left the top off the spring; when he realised what he had done he galloped around the lake three times to stop the water flowing; he went off to sleep in a cave and will awaken again if Wales is in danger.)

We divided the story up into sections, and each group scripted, storyboarded, filmed and edited one section. Here’s the completed film telling the whole story.

Llyn Llech Owain

For more information about our workshops visit the workshops page, and for some examples of work visit the Projects Archive.