Film Festival:  Resources for Teaching and Learning

Resources have been created, curated and shared by Manaiakalani Teachers to support film festival planning and preparation. 

About the Manaiakalani Film Festival

Participating and contributing to the annual Manaiakalani Film Festival is a highlight of our year. Films are premiered at Hoyts Sylvia Park in November and need to be submitted by the end of Term 3. 

To prepare your learners to participate and contribute in the Manaiakalani Film Festival it is essential to identify opportunities to Learn, Create, Share  throughout the year. From planning and presenting to storyboarding, editing and filming, identify opportunities for your learners to harness video to tell and share their stories as soon as you can. Increased opportunities to take ownership of the process early in the year will empower our young people and build their confidence to participate and contribute to the film festival.

Some things you need to know

Empowering your learners before the Film Festival

The suggestions outlined below are designed to empower your learners to harness Learn Create Share to amplify and turbo charge their learning. The following also introduce opportunities to learn the skills our young people will utilise when creating their film for the festival. Explore the doc and identify strategies that you believe will work best for your learners. If you need help please contact the Manaiakalani PLD team and also look out for Toolkits on the Manaiakalani calendar. 

Learn Create Share: Film Festival

Creating your film for the Manaiakalani Film Festival

Take some time to introduce the Manaiakalani Film Festival as an annual event and identify how best to engage your learners with the theme. 

Film Festival Toolkit by Andrea Tele'a: Tips and ideas for introducing the Manaiakalani Film Festival which could be adapted for teachers and/or learners. Open Slide Deck

Emphasis on your story is critical

“A compelling story, to paraphrase Kevin Roberts, engages the audience's emotions whether through humour, pathos, sympathy, joy, adrenaline or whatever. The story is essential.”  Dorothy Burt Blog Post

1. Explore past Manaiakalani films for inspiration

Take time with your learners to explore past films for their narrative elements (the story) and cinematic techniques e.g. shots, sound and editing.

2. Pitch your film idea for feedback. 

Depending on your learners a variation of The Visual Portrait of a Story may be helpful.

Visual Portrait of a Story

"Within the context of digital storytelling, The Visual Portrait of Story (VPS), was included to support the story planning process, after coming up with the idea but before students storyboard or outline the script. Key to the VPS is that it supports the necessity of a good story to include the main character experiencing some kind of transformation (Jason Ohler)

3. Storyboard

Storyboard Google Doc- provide scaffolding for planning sequence and elements of the story

Storyboard That

Create your storyboard and take a partial screen shot. 

No need to login or save online.

4. Planning the shoot and filming

Shooting Schedule - a well planned shoot enables efficient use of time to both film and edit and minimises  panning. Cut the pan shots!

Consider co-constructing criteria with your learners in response to purpose, genre, length. This also provides opportunities to begin to explore elements of a film e.g. framing and picture composition  and camera shots

6. Don't Forget the Music

The Difference Music Makes In a Video (blog post and resources)

“In the video Josh Wanner explains why music choice matters in a video production. To demonstrate his points Wanner plays the same video clip with three different music tracks in the background.”

 

Quickly Create sound tracks using AI for your movies https://suno.com 

Gives you 50 credits when you log in. Teachers can fill out this form to potentially receive free credits. FIRST create a Suno account using your school email,  then type the email you used for your Suno account in the form.

Vertical Video 

Vertical Video refers to movies that are filmed vertically. These might be OK if your movie is designed to screen on Instagram or SnapChat and to be watched on your phone. 

Movies for our film festival will be screened on the BIG Screen, including the Xtremescreen, please film in landscape.