Using a combination of the last of our Partners and Excellence funding and funding from the Bòrd na Gàidhlig we held what was possibly our last film making weekend.
Pupils came from 4 Argyll schools and worked in French, German and Gaelic. Each group worked with a mentor and other members of staff were on hand for technical advice. The weekend was slightly shorter than usual finishing at lunchtime on the Sunday - however there was no loss of quality in the films produced!
After a bit of drama (a workshop not a crisis!) on arrival on Friday the students were split into groups - each group was given a selection of props and a product to advertise - the two French groups did adverts for shampoo and spot cream, the German groups holidays and car and the Gaelic group mobile phones. Scripts were written on the Friday night and afterwards the students relaxed (or were we trying to wear them out?) with a bit of salsa.
After a good breakfast and a quick reminder of the golden rules of filming the students got back into groups and started filming their adverts. As always nothing lying around Ben More was safe and the centre’s mini-bus had a bit of a starring role, as did Kay’s car! There were pirates in the grounds digging for treasure and trying to book tickets by mobile on the next Calmac sailing to Hawaii (still trying to work out how much that would be for a car and passengers). Meanwhile one of the German groups had abandoned holidays and were now advertising their Rent a Monkey service and indeed I think they sold it to everyone…
After a short break groups made a start on editing before assembling for one of Mark’s infamous quiz/karaoke/dance sessions, followed by a disco.
If all of this sounds exhausting then it was - especially as after the disco finished we’d to put the clocks forward - still haven’t quite recovered from that lost hour.
Sunday morning (we’d an extra half hour in bed…) saw the end of the editing, before everyone came together to see the finished adverts and they are very good - creative ideas and lots of good language, a credit to all.
As always the students were a pleasure to work with, willing to get involved and a credit to their schools - truly good examples of all the ACfE capacities. For the staff it was a bit of a reunion and the good news it might not be the last - may be a bit of money to start planning next year’s event - watch this space. The weekend is too good to give up completely and I can’t emphasise enough what it means for pupils on the islands in particular to meet up with their peers. In the meantime a few photos to show that even for staff a film making weekend is a bit of fun - and a couple of photos to show there was some work going on!
Although it took a while I have finally (more or less) managed to sync iPods to iBooks and upload some videos/podcasts for revision. I’ll try and keep them charged over the next few weeks so that pupils can use them during study time - it will also give them an idea of some of the things they can download from my YouTube Channel for their own mp4 players. The French music and news reports have been quite popular and I have also put on the first episode of the new East Ayrshire Tripod podcasts. We’ll continue to develop this over the next year - I am especially looking to develop more Gaelic materials, as they are not so easy to find on YouTube, although there is some.
