Mandy's ITP Blog

This is a journal of my work with the America Reads program. America Reads places college students in New York City public schools, to tutor math and English. I worked with the Beekman International School this year. The teacher that I worked with, Anastasis Macris, was absolutely wonderful, and let me teach some lessons on Mexico, through the creation of a claymation film. The kids made armatures, built sets, wrote scripts, recorded the audio, made clothing and performed all of the stop animation. They worked really hard and produced amazing results. Here is a log of our work:

4/24/07 Showed children a slideshow of the different regions of Mexico. (Northern, Southern, Tropical Rainforest and Desert.) We told the children, "Mexico is a country where the land meets oceans and there are deserts, moutains and rain forests....Think about how people live in these areas....." We then asked the children to list questions they may have about Mexico. Here are some of the questions that they came up with:

-What is edible in a desert environment?
-What kinds of animals can you eat?
-Is there running water?

We then divided the questions into these four categories: food, shelter, clothing and vegetation.

Next period was free time, so I brought in my clay, armature squirrel and spoke to the kids about the movie making process. Then I showed them both of my claymation movies. They asked: how I got the bird to fly, how did I get the animals' eyes to move, if the wire would fall off and how did could you take pictures of the animals without being in the picture?

4/27/07 We had an open discussion about what we saw in the pictures, and used books and the internet to research the answers to our questions. Once research was complete, we asked the students to sign up for one of four groups: North Clothing, North Shelter, South Clothing and South Shelter. Later, we came together and talked about needs vs. wants, and details of what we need to live.

4/30/07
I brought in both boxes I used for my claymation projects, along with the clay, armature animals.

5/1/07
We had the kids brainstorm on story ideas for the movie. We wrote down a bunch of ideas on the board, and assigned a story idea for homework. These are some of the questions/comments that the children had:
-Can Shelter people (meaning the Shelter group) make food for the market (scene)?
-Can we make a clothesline? (I am assuming this was derived from seeing my claymation that had a clothesline in it. I was actually pretty excited by this question since they saw my movie about a week ago, and obviously still remembered it and continued to think about it.)
-Are we actually going to be making the boxes (sets)?
-Our porches could have lights!
-We should put a Rue Tree (healing tree) in our set.

The the kids broke up into their groups, and discussed set designs and their research. One child did quite a bit of research for the shelter group, and brought in pictures of Mayan houses. Here is some of the dialogue from the Shelter group:

I: "We can paint sticks!"

N: "The people slept on hammocks and mats. We can get clothing people to make the hammocks!"

I: "N, do you have a doll table made of wood?"

N: "I do not play with dolls!"

L: "We could use cardboard for the table."

I: "And then cover the table with a tablecloth."

L: "Where do we put the TV?"

All: "They don't have TVs!"

5/2/07 Field Trip
We went on a field trip to Pan American Phoenix. One of the parents of a previous student works there, so they kindly offered to give us a tour and provide research for the groups.

5/3/07 Set building Day 1
We started to make clay armature people, the walls for our houses, vegetation and food. I found that sometimes the kids got off track while working with the clay, and started to make things that did not relate to our movie. (Like pizza for instance.) Every now and then, their teacher and I reminded them that they had to make things from their research. To reiterate that, we assigned each group a "recorder," and they wrote down the names of the plants, food, etc. that were made at their table.

5/4/07 Set building Day 2
One period of the day we finished our projects from Day 1, and another period of the day we drew designs on cloth, for the people's clothing and for the outdoor market scene.

Mrs. Macris and I stayed late and put together the houses.

5/7/07 For a homework assignment, Mrs. Macris had the children make tiles for our kitchen set. To incorporate a math lesson, we used the tiles to demonstrate symmetry.

5/16/07 Set Building Day 3 and a Trip to ITP Woodshop
Today we used the tiles that the children drew from the symmetry lesson, and used them to decorate the kitchen sets. We used the cloth that the children drew designs on, to create clothing for the figures. We also created more animals and made pottery for the set.

After school, I went to the woodshop at ITP to make furniture for the set.

5/17/07 Audio
Mrs. Macris wrote the script for our movie, and divided up the lines so that each student had about three lines. Today we recorded the audio with a shotgun mic. The students loved the fact that TV anchors use these exact pieces of equipment. "LIke on Fox news!?" was one of the first comments/questions. The children learned how to talk into a mic, how to read lines (i.e. You do not read the italicized words aloud, they are just directional) and they learned that you cannot interrupt people while they are reading, or the recording will be ruined.

One of the children raised there hand and made an accouncement, "Ok guys, do not be nervous...because we are just kids and parents are not expecting very much. They will be happy with anything!" (Needless to say the kids did not appreciate the humor in that statement, but instead were relieved to hear the piece of advice.)

5/18/07 Shooting Day 1
I brought the equipment in early, at 8 am and got setup. I had an area reserved in the school's all purpose room, and they put up a divider so we would not be disturbed.

Before classes started we had a quick meeting on the carpet to go over the process and to review safety measures. Then we all went down to the all-purpose room for a quick demonstration and time for questions. After the demo, two children stayed behind and I worked in groups of 2-3 all day. Having 2 kids at a time was ideal. I worked with each child individually, and the other child either make any emergency props that were needed or watched me work with the other child, so they were ready to go when it was their turn.

It was an overall fantastic experience! Most of the children were very excited about the project. I moved the camera and used the computer, and instructed the children on when and how to move the figures. Usually I would move the clay animal or person for the first picture, just to demonstrate, and from then on the children performed all of the animation on their own. I had some initial concerns about such young children (between 8-9 years old) being coordinated enough to move the clay figures in small increments. However, not one child experienced a problem with this! They were all very enthusiastic and happy to help. A handful of students even offered their own suggestions about how the clay figures should be moved. I think one of the most exciting parts for the children was the pace at which we took pictures. They seemed to really enjoy moving the figures, moving out of the way quickly so I could take the pictures and then quickly moving the figures again.

At the end of the day, three kids brought me thank you cards that they made. They said: "Thank you for helping us make the movie! You rock! and I will miss you!" So adorable.

5/18/07 Shooting Day 2
Today was our final shooting day. It went smoothly, except for the fact that one of my tota lights did not properly fit in the stand. I shot in the same manner that I had the time before (2 kids at a time) and we somehow managed to get the movie done.

After the shoot I showed the kids the raw footage.

6/04/07 - 6/14/07 Editing
Editing took forever. I had about 1500 images to work with, and believe it or not, iMovie seemed to be the easiest software to use for such a large project. (But I did use AfterEffects for the camera effect in the beginning.) Overall, It was a difficult task. I found that the audio clip (about 7.5 minutes) was just too long. I needed a lot of fillers, so I used my establishing shots (Yes, Susan, I took establishing shots!) and used the Ken Burns Effect quite a lot. (Which I found pretty humorous, because I immediately thought of reviewing iMovie in CommLab, and how we were told to turn off the KB effect off at all costs!)

One of the best pasts of the movie, is the music during the ending credits. The kids placed "Chips and Salsa" on their recorders during music class.

6/15/07 Movie Viewing Day
It was Family Day at school, so we figured that would be a perfect time to unveil the movie! Luckily I was able to come into work late, which was really nice of them considering I had just started.

Earlier that day, the kids made movie posters to publicize the viewing, so cute.

About 10 parents came to see the movie (which was pretty impressive considering there are only 19 kids in the class.) The kids were really excited and had a great time pointing to their friends when their narrative played. It was the first time they heard their audio recording, so they were all really thrilled to hear it.

My final task was to burn copies of the movie for all the kids.

I am honestly pretty sad that it is over. It was overall such a great experience, and I am very glad to have had it.

Click Here to Watch "Milo Goes Home"

*I had to substantially decrease the quality of this file, in order to get it small enough to fit online. It was originally 2G*