Session 1 - Restart Sessions - Introduction To Campaigning And Ideas Generation - 18/4/12

We kicked off the session by watching three examples of other films/campaigns for the benefit of all of the new starters.We all discussed the audience, the message and our likes and dislikes for each video/campaign.

Choose a different ending:
Audience: 13-19 year olds

Message: Don't carry a knife as it has consequences
Likes and dislikes:
- It's like a deterance
- The song at the end didn't work as it didn't make sense
- The sexy girls are a contradiction
- It looked like an amateur film
- It would be better longer
- It's stereotypical - young people will always get stop and searched
- Liked the choices - they are like your conscience
- It makes you think
- They could have made it more realistic - not everyone knows everyone in their area or are part of a gang
- The part where his friend offers him the knife is unrealistic as it would never just happen that way

Teen talent takes over 10 Downing Street:
Audience: Government, teenagers, curriculum leaders of the area and anyone with space
Message:Young people need their own space to be creative
Likes and dislikes:
- The free running puts you off
- It changes youth stereotyping
- The message is clear - we need space
- It means something being filmed at 10 Downing Street
- Liked the setting and talent - they both make it fun and serious at the same time
- It gets people's attention
- There's lots of stuff out there similar to it for young people - so it's not memorable

Beat the bully:
Audience: Secondary school age
Message:Don't just struggle, help someone if they are getting bullied or report it
Likes and dislikes:
- It's a little unrealistic with the phone bit - the name of the bully came up when she text (you wouldn't have a bully's name stored in your phone)
- Liked the setting
- The fight was realistic - in schools there is always a swarm of people
- It's hard to feel sorry for the boy
- The teacher bit is unrealistic as nobody usually finds out
- It needs something extra to give the viewer more empathy - it needed a starting point
- We would set in more on social networking websites

Storyboards and shot list:
We discussed that we need to come up with the script before we do storyboarding, but this is something that we will have to do.

The shot list that we want to use for our film is:
- Wide shot
- Mid shot
- Close-up

Ideas:
We all came up with three ideas that we wanted to make our film about and fed them back to the rest of the group.



Scene ideas:
We worked on discussing some scene ideas:

We want to have two scenarios:
1. A gang culture scenario
2. An in school bullying scenario

- The storyline will focus on the friend of two boys.One of the boys is getting bullied and the other is contemplating joining a gang.

Comments:
Campaigning:
- You have to have something that you want to change.
- We are the next generation of olders so let's change this now

Bullying:
- Don't take things into your own hands
- Situations escalate from in school and carry on outside of school
- Somebody always takes it too far

Our Message:
It stops with us!

We finished up the session by starting the proposal form and filling in feedback forms.

Introductory Session - Restart Sessions - Bringing New People Into The Group - 11/4/12

This session we were all really happy to be back and on track with our film. There were some new people that came to sign up for our sessions to help make our campaign brilliant.

Filling everyone in on our previous progress:
Djed filled all of the new people in on what we had done so far on our film.

Role preference:
Karl and Michael are keen to be behind the camera and everyone else is happy to be either in front of or behind the camera.

Ideas:
We all came up with some suggestions as to how and where we can share our film:
- Posters around the school (on the big screens)
- Show it in assemblies
- We can put it on the school's online page - frog or ispace - the school's idevelopment space.

We all agreed that we are keen to take our film into other schools once it is finished.

Some fresh ideas that we we all discussed to make the film about are:
- Cyber bullying
- Bullying in school (too cliché)
- Estate/bullying outside schools - continues
- Gangs - going into unknown territories
- Stereotypes - immigration bullying
- The way people dress
- Homosexuality
- Obesity
- Anorexic - more the way people look

What is a campaign?
We all discussed other campaigns that we know and that a campaign's main purpose is to make a change.
- Amnesty - a peace campaign
- Make poverty history

Our Campaign:
We want to make a change by making a short film. We want our audience to be 12-16 year olds. We want young people to come to our campaign, think for a while or signpost them on.

How can we make our campaign appeal?
- Refer our film to other films to make it more relevant - i.e. the Daminola Taylor case.

Where do we want to see our campaign?
- Bus stops where young people wait
- School assemblies
- School lessons
- Facebook/YouTube
- Screens around school

Evaluation:
We filled in our feedback forms and look forward to next week's session where we can get started on our campaign.

Session 4 - Improvising Scenes and Finalising Roles

Looking at shots in a film sequence:
We started the session off by watching a video of the basic camera shots that are used in sequence in a television show or film. After learning about the different shots in our previous sessions we had to shout out what shot was being used in each scene when it came up. We discussed what shots that we thought we wanted to use in our film and why they all worked well.

The main shots that we want to use in our film are:
- Wide shot - This is to set the scene.
- Mid shot - This is to show who else is in the scene.
- Close up shot - This is to show emotion.

We all felt that these were all effective enough to only need the three shots in our film.

Scene improvisation:
After this we worked on improvising our school corridor scene and got everyone not in the scene to film it. This was useful as we were able to get some dialogue for our script from this.

We then watched the scene back that we had filmed and discussed which of the shots we could use and which ones were not good enough to use.

What does everyone already know?
We discussed what we all knew already about film. We already knew a bit about shots as we had showed them in previous sessions.

We talked about the different shots and what they did for a piece, e.g. a close-up can portray emotion and is good for someone talking and makes it easier to see somebody’s face.

Finalising the roles:
We finalised the roles with everyone present and agreed that we would take it in turns to do the filming. Thomas will be in most scenes as he is the main character but he expressed that he wanted to help with the filming on the parts that he won’t be in.

We all agreed that we wanted Tristan to do the script as it will be quicker and that we will all go over it together to give feedback.

Our storyline:
The film will tell the story of a young boy who is getting bullied at school. It will start at the end with a beaten and bruised boy walking home from school sad. It will show the boy getting bullied at school on numerous occasions and his friends see it all but don't say anything. The the film will rewind and start with the boy really happy walking down the road on his way home. The school day will go the same as far as the table tennis bullying scene, where his friend tells a teacher about the boy getting bullied.

Our message is: It's ok to help a friend.

Evaluations:
We finished the session by getting the group to fill in evaluation forms.

Update:
We have decided that because there is not enough of us coming to the sessions to create the film, that we will be putting our campaign on hold. The sessions will restart once we have got some more young people to join.

Session 3 - Finalising Locations, Improvising Scenes and Finishing Our Proposal

Ice-breaker
We started off the session with an ice-breaker - stop, go, jump and clap. It was really fun but really made us use our brain.

Paperwork:
We all discussed and completed our proposal form and went over what props we are going to need for our film.

Updating absent members of our group:
We went over what we all worked on in our previous session for Djed who was absent. This was so that he was kept up to date with where we were up to.

How a film set works:
We role-played the set-up of a film set so that the young people could see where everyone needs to be,
what they need to say and what they need to do on the day of filming.

Locations:
We discussed the location recce and chose the best places that will work for our film.

We then went around the school to visit and film the different locations to give us an idea of what shots will work where.

Improvising scenes:
We did some improvisation of our table tennis scene, where the bully picks on the victim whilst he plays table tennis. Everyone who was not involved in the scene, filmed it so that we could get an idea of what it would look like on the screen.

Homework:
We were all set some homework, which was to research the schools anti-bullying policy and some statistics on bullying.

Evaluating:
We finished the session by getting the group to fill in evaluation forms.

Session 2 - Planning Our Campaign

Ice-breaker
We started the session with an icebreaker to get the group thinking and on their feet. For the ice-breaker we all had to put a piece of paper on our heads and draw around it, then pass it on to the next person to add eyes, then the next for the nose and so on until we all had a complete face. On the drawing we ended up with we had to write our name on it and then tell everyone about how the picture represents us an individuals.

Group activity - brain storming
We split  into two groups, to discuss our ideas for locations for our film and build up a storyline.

We brain stormed our ideas for locations and we came up with a wide selection of locations of where we might want to film within our school.

Some of the locations that we came up with were:
- The playground
- In a classroom
- Near the outdoor ping pong tables
- The corridors in the school
- At the school gates
- The alley way near the school

Once we had completed our location brain storming, we worked on developing one of the ideas that we had come up with for our storyline. This was so that we had one main idea for our final film.

Presenting our ideas:
Both of our groups presented their ideas to each other. One of the groups filmed the other group, using flip cameras whilst the other group shared their ideas. This was so that they had a record of our ideas on film and so that we could practice different shots.

Once both of our groups had discussed our ideas, as a whole group we reviewed and discussed them. We took aspects of each storyline and merged them together to make a really great story for the film. We decided on our main message and on which locations would be best for our storyline. We then decided on who wanted to do which role in the film.

Interview skills:
We practiced a few interview skills by working in pairs to film and interview each other about our experiences of bullying. This was a really interesting activity as we got to practice shooting video using different shots.

We all decided that it will be more convenient for us all to meet after school on Wednesdays instead of Thursdays.

Evaluating:
We finished the session by getting the group to fill in evaluation forms.

Session 1 - Introduction To Campaigning and Communications

Update
We had an introductory session the previous week to this session. During that session we discussed some ideas about what sort of campaign that we wanted to do. We decided that we wanted to create a short film.


Introductions
As this was officially our first session we started off with introductions.

Ice-breaker
We did an ice-breaker which was a ball throwing game, which we had to say our name and then throw the ball to someone else and then say their name. This was a really good way to remember everybody's names.

Looking at other films/campaigns
We looked at an example of  another film/campaign which is similar to what we want to do . We discussed; Who the audience was, what the message was, what was good about it and what was bad about it.

Beat the Bully short film

Choose a different ending

Teen talent takes over 10 Downing St

Planning our campaign (form filling)

We discussed different elements of our campaign and what we need to decide before we can create our short film.

Who is it for?

- Young people at secondary school.

What is the message?

- Don't bully others, it's ok to ask for help.

Why is it important?

- To help raise awareness of bullying and help to prevent it from happening.

What would you want people to DO about it?

- To tell someone if they are getting bullied and if someone sees somebody getting bullied to get them to tell somebody.

Our basic storyline:
One student is sat eating their lunch in the school corridor. A  group of friends walk from one direction and a group of bullies from another, then a stand off begins.

We started our proposal form.

Evaluation

We finished up the session by filling in our evaluation forms.