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Filmmaker in the School II – Mid Year Report 2005/2006

Seventh Grade, Lawrence School
Falmouth, MA
Instructor, Jenny Junker
Classroom Teacher, Krista Hennessy


In October, Brian Switzer and I met with Cynthia Eaton and Phyllis Goldstein to discuss plans and budget for the new projects, and briefly reviewed our experience from last year’s “pilot” run.

I will be working on short videos with a selection of Lawrence School seventh graders and their English teacher, Krista Hennessy. 

Our goal at the Lawrence School is to use video to explore key concepts of the grade-level English class work.  Students must tell a story with the camera.  In doing so, they must:
- build dramatic tension/climax
- develop characters and dialogue
- create atmosphere, mood
- get hands-on experience with camera operation, lighting, sound, costumes/props, directing and editing
- understand and apply basic filmmaking techniques: story board, setting up shots, handling the equipment (including details like connectors, loading tapes and batteries, etc), using a shooting script and slate, directing the actors and props.

As part of their curriculum study of Folklore, Ms. Hennessy’s English students have already been using a video camera to record their efforts at story telling.  Ms. Hennessy required each student to learn a folk tale, and then tell it to the class in front of the camera.

Having experienced the difference between reading a story and hearing one told, we ask: how does film work for telling a story?  What can we learn about narrative as we “translate” it between these different modalities?  Ms. Hennessy hopes that her students will become more able to recognize the “bones” of a story and pick out the plot points.  In deciding what to show on film, the students must make choices and test them.

Ms. Hennessy has selected 10 students for our project.  We meet at 10th period, about once a week.  Class periods are 42 minutes—we extend this time by adding an hour after school.

Because some students have been excused from parts of Foreign Language classes to work on this project, we have agreed to make a short Spanish-language video “teleromanzo” (soap opera), with dubbing and/or subtitles.

The first half our year has been as follows:

Sessions 1 & 2To observe the English classes and discuss plans with Ms. Hennessy, to meet the students and introduce the project.

Session 3 Students used a still camera to practice setting up shots and directing actions.  We made a short “animation” slide show, set in the classroom.

Session 4 We brainstormed and started writing the script for our “teleromanzo” and tried some run-throughs.  We experimented with auditions: “screen tests.”

Session 5 The auditioning/screen testing process has given rise to a little video we call “Stereotypes”.  We take turns at these five jobs: actors, director, sound, cameraperson, and props/location person.  Each actor plays three “stereotype” characters (scripted by the group collaboratively, but improvised by the actor).  Using acting, costumes, and props, the individual transforms in diverse roles.  A surprise twist brings the characters together.


“Filmmaker in the School” project
Jenny Junker, Lawrence School 2005-06
Concluding notes for this years school film projects.

Since I last wrote in the middle of the school year, we completed our principal short video works “French Cooking show” and “Teleromanzo” (Spanish language soap opera trailer scenes).
Eight and a half minutes in duration, these films were conceived, scripted, scored, cast, acted, and (in part) shot by our group of nine students, under my direction and with the input of their English teacher Krista Hennessy. I edited the project at the Film Festival office on I-Movie, with the assistance of  WHFF volunteers.  We also created a foreign language version of these films, with the voices of the student actors dubbed by their French and Spanish teachers. For this version, the students helped translate the script, set up microphones, directed the recording, and created original sound track elements.
We reviewed our work at a small screening in the Lawrence school. We also joined Brian Switzer and his students and families at the Morse Pond School to screen this years film projects.
Another body of work we call “stereotypes” was conceived and shot, but never brought into an editing phase. This years’ students hope to continue the work on this and other projects next fall when they return to Lawrence as eighth graders.
Krista Hennessy and I applied for and received a grant from the FEF, in an effort to expand the funding for this work and thus devote more resources to making more films with more students. We cited our accomplishments of the two years work with the WHFF “Filmmaker in the School” program.
We are ready to launch our third year of this project in the fall, and hope the Festival will raise the money to fund us again. We feel the work thus far has been fruitful and we are attaining the goals for which we aim.

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