Movies
As part of Peterborough City Council's READ-WRITE campaign, Gunthorpe Primary School entered the first Peterborugh Children's Film Awards competition in 2006.
In order to squeeze this into an already full curriculum timetable, it was decided to hold Movie workshops during enrichment. Two film groups of year 5 and 6 pupils were set up to work on the project.
The P'Oscars (aptly named for Peterborough Oscars) would seem a lot of fun but children involved have found there is a lot of work to be done before the filming even starts. Filming does play a part in the curriculum and is a very crafty way of involving and helping children to learn through different methods. The work that is required to produce a digital movie links into the national curriculum and cuts across subjects such as Literacy/English (speaking and listening, reading, story writing and planning etc), Citizenship, D & T (Design and Technology), and of course IT. The film making process starts with discussions about the different styles of movie making and categories of film, we then move on to the "ideas" stage, starting with story boards and then developing a script. The next stages are the preparation as we decide what method of filming to us eg live action or animation and we then need to make our own sets and props. The Film Crew will also run their own auditions if necessary for actors and voice over artists and once these have been completed they have the very difficult task of choosing the best people for the roles. After this we get to the stage most groups prefer, the filming ! Which is fun but also teaches a great lesson in patience, not everything runs smoothly as our outtakes can show. Once the filming is completed we have editing and special effects to consider and finally we hope, production of a disc. After this stage we submit our films to the competition and keep our fingers crossed. we also like to hold our own Premiere prior to the Children's Film Awards as this lets the rest of the school see the films and we also invite the parents of the children in the Film Groups to this event.
There is no budget to support film making in school so each year the film groups produce DVDs of the P'Oscars Movies and various school performances which are available for parents to buy. Money raised from these sales is only used to support film making and thanks to everyone buying the DVDs we have been able to continue and improve our resources. The funds have provided special clay for animation filming, wigs, costumes and fabrics for making costumes.
For more information on the films please visit the Pupils area.