We have begun a multi media class in The Living School with another parent as the teacher. The children have begun to write their own screenplays, shoot, direct and edit some of their own short films. The goal is to be ready for the Youth Silent Film Festival this June.
So, I have decided to flesh that out with a little history of photography and the moving picture. The previous exploration of the flip book phenomenon was part of this concept. Next, we talked about the Camera Obscura, (meaning "Dark Room") whose invention can be dated back as early as the 4th century BC, with writings about it attributed to Aristotle. It is considered the seed that grew into the film camera we know today. There above, you see a drawing of what one looked like. The idea behind this contraption is that if a bright light is shone through a tiny pinhole, the image on the outside of the box is shone upside down on the inside of the box. This instrument was used presumably by artists to project and copy images for paintings.
Keri, our patron saint at SCRAP,gave us a huge bag of clear colored plastic items she had been collecting to play with on our projectors. I wanted to get the kids thinking about shadow puppets and gave them all of this 'junk' to play with to get the creativity flowing. I also showed them some overhead projector shadow puppet plays on YouTube that were very well done. They were doing color-mixing, exploring textures, cutting out their own shapes and letters for title cards and using all of the parts of the projector for various effects. By then end of the class time we had 3 different plays being created and one wildly colorful psychedelic/disco light show, complete with soundtrack, happening on the wall.
Your pictures and documentation are great. Thank you for doing this for our children.
ReplyDelete