And the winner is...

Yesterday, some of my students and I attended the Lee County Student Film Festival.  I was super excited and so were the students who attended with me.  

This was our first time attending.  We entered one of our movies we made this year in the festival.  I thought it would be fun to enter.  I previously posted about making movies (the pictures taken for that blog post were a part of the movie we entered into the festival).

After we came up with an idea for our movie, we started sketching out our ideas on a storyboard.  This really helped us narrow how we wanted to film and what we wanted to do.  This is what our storyboard looked like. 

After the students videotaped the scene, I crossed out the picture on the storyboard.  This helped us keep track of what we had filmed and what we still needed to do.  This was such a great experience for the students.  They wrote, filmed, acted, directed and they helped edit their movie.  They did an awesome job!  You can view our movie HERE.

Anyways, the festival was last night.  We received an email a few weeks ago saying our movie was one of the finalist in the festival and asking us if we were going to attend.  Just finding out we were finalist maybe us super excited!  The festival encouraged everyone to dress up for a red carpet event.

My husband and I all ready for the Film Festival.

Once we got to the Film Festival we were even more excited!  We felt like celebrities.  Our school even had a gold star on the red carpet!

Here is the cover of the 

The festival had a limo out front for pictures.  My students loved it!  They were all giggly when they were inside of the limo.  They even came into school today talking about the big car.

 Standing by our school star!

The festival started with the K-5 categories.  They gave 3 different places for each category if the category had more than 3 in it.  For the whole festival there were over 300 movies that entered.  There was a K-5 group, 6-8 group, and a 9-12 group.

Once the presenter got to our category, Comedy, my heart was racing!  I couldn't believe I was so nervous.  

He started with the third place winner.  

Then he announced the second place winner.  

It wasn't us so I knew we got first place.  The students were so adorable because they all jumped up and screamed with excitement when our name was announced for the first place winner.  We all walked down and got the award.  Then they showed some clips to the audience of our movie.  It was cool to see the audience laugh at different parts of the movie.  Here is the trophy we received.

The students came into school today ready and excited to tell everyone about everything from last night.  It was so neat to see how much it meant to them.  

Great Job Team Wolfe!!

                                                                       

Green Screen Tutorial

After posting about how I make movies with my kindergarteners, I had some people ask about how I use the green screen. So, I thought I would write a tutorial for you.  It is super easy to use. 
  This is how I use my green screen.  It is probably not the only way you could use it, but this is how I do it.  I am not a professional.  I have played around with it and it seems to work for me and my classroom movies.  I hope this tutorial inspires you to use a green screen in your classroom. 

First you need a green screen.

 I originally purchased Kelly Green fabric from JoAnn's.  The fabric worked very well for a green screen.  You could also buy a professional green screen or use green butcher paper.  In the picture above, I used green butcher paper.

Any part that is green will be covered by the picture I place on it.  If you notice my set up in the picture, the calendar is to the right of the green.  If the video camera would have gotten the blue calendar on it, the calendar would be seen on the video.  Also, when using a green screen, if you are having a student in front of it they can't wear green or they would be invisible.  I have also had a problem with gold.  I guess gold is too much like green so it doesn't work very well.

Once you have a green screen, you will need extra light.  The more light you have, the better, but you don't want too many shadows.  I had a parent buy me the construction lights.  I put one on each side.  I would like to get another one to have in the middle.  I usually put them on a stack of something so they are off the ground.  You could also buy a stand for them to get them higher.  

So now you have a green screen and it is well lit.  Now double check and make sure the green screen doesn't have any deep wrinkles.  Sometimes the wrinkles will show up on the movie.

Now you are ready to film what you want in front of the green screen.  Once you have all of your film, open up iMovie.

iMovie- Screen when you open it.

Click File, then click New Project.
 
 
Select the theme you want your movie to have.  Give it a name and then click Create!

Next you need to put what you want as the background in the top box.  I had the picture on my desktop so I dragged it to the box to put it into iMovie.  You could click the T on the right hand side to add pictures from iPhoto if that is where your picture is.  You could also use a stock video as your background.



 
Next you are going to click File.  Then you need to import your video clips.  You can import from your camera or you can import from movies.  Where you keep your video clips is where you will import them from.

Once you import your clip, they will show up in the bottom box. 




Next you need to click the clip you want to use.  The clip I want to use is highlight in yellow.

Once you click the clip it will say how long the clip it.  (Mine says it is 15:07 seconds long) 

  Then I go up to the background I added and see how long it is.  Once I click the background it will be highlighted and say how long. (Mine says 4:00 seconds long)  As you can see, my background is too short.  I need to make it the same length as my video clip. 

  Click the wheel under the length.  Then click Clip Adjustments.


 
This is what opens.  Then change the Duration to the time of the video clip.




 Here my time is changed to 15:07 seconds just like the clip.  Then click Done.



 
Once you click done the background will be the same length as the video clip.

Now click your video clip.  Mine is highlighted by yellow.
 

 
Then drag your clip up to the background you chose.  Go to the spot you want to add the video.  Once you unclick the video a window will open.  Go down to Green Screen and click that.

Then you should see your video clip added to the top of the background.  Then on the right side it should be put together so you can view it.  This is how it would really look.  If you are not happy with how it looks there may be a way to fix it.




 
Click the setting button on the background.  Then click Video Adjustments.

 In this picture I played with the Exposure.  This one has 25% exposure.  As you can tell, this doesn't make it look better for my video.

Here I played with the Exposure again but moved it the opposite direction.  Adjusting the Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, and/or Saturation may help your video.  Also adjusting the red, green, or blue gain may help. 

 
I think my video looks good without making any adjustments to it.


That is how to use a green screen.  I hope this is helpful!

                                                                       

Do you make movie with your class?

Do you make movies in your classroom?  I do and the students LOVE it!  We have made two movies so far this year.  Last year my class made three movies.  I was so proud of the students.  They did such a great job.

Last year I decided to start the movie making process in my classroom.  I was on the internet a lot researching how to do it.  I am not an expert, not even close.  I am also still learning.  I just think it is fun for me and the students to make movies throughout the year.  Take a look at our first movie of the year.  David Goes to School.

We film our movie in our classroom or anywhere we need to.  We also use a green screen.  Green screen's are great!  They allow me to put any picture or background I purchase behind the students when putting the film together.  Here is a picture of the green screen.

I originally went out an bought green fabric to use as the green screen, but I found I needed a bigger screen so I ended up adding green butcher paper to the fabric.  The No David movie was filmed using the green screen.  Below is a picture of my students using the green screen to film our latest movie. 

As you can see, the students do most of the work with the movie.  They write the script, film, and act.  All I do is put it together using iMovie.

When we first start thinking about making a movie we first come up with an idea of what we want the movie to be about.  It may be something we have learned or something we are in the process of learning.  The No David movie is a great movie to review the rules of school.  Our latest movie, The Magic School Bus Goes to Mount Rushmore, we started talking about the movie and then we learned who was on Mount Rushmore and the Presidents of Mount Rushmore.  This was great because the students really had to understand who the Presidents were so they could be them in the movie. (This movie I entered into the Lee County Film Festival.  I am super excited about this.  This is my first time entering anything)  By making a movie the students became even more engaged  in learning the subject matter.  Any grade can do this!  I teach kindergarten and my students love it.  It is hard work but when they watch the final movie their faces light up.  

Do you make movies with your class?