Adventures in After School Learning Blog

-By Mike DeBritz on Monday, April 23, 2012

If you need to reach out and involve more High School (or mature Middle School) students this summer, we have a great opportunity! 

Our Screenwriting for Short Video: An Introduction for Teens kit has everything you need to run an engaging mini course on this high interest topic!

This 10-unit program is designed to engage older students in a highly participatory and intriguing study of movie-making. Kids know when they like a film...after taking this class they'll understand why!

Our approach to the weekly activities is to first introduce students to concepts of screenwriting like the three-act structure, creating characters and writing dialogue.

Then students will look at award-winning teen-produced movies as examples. This drives each concept home but also helps students visualize themselves sitting in the director's chair.

Next students participate in a critique, and move to working on applying these concepts to their own short video scripts.

In ten fun-filled weeks, students will walk away with a working knowledge of video storytelling and complete a script with a meaningful theme, characters and scenes ready to shoot!

We've worked hard to make this kit affordable and easy to maintain for future use. The complete package, which includes materials for a class of 20 students, is only $695!

To learn more about this program and review the detailed program outline, click here.  Or if you're inspired, click here to order!

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Because school filters are getting tougher and tougher these days, I want to re-post some key information and links on our newest kit, "Screenwriting for Short Video: An Introduction for Teens."

Student Introduction:

Have you got the chops? The hook? The imagination? Before your video can collect “millions of hits” or connect with your social network on YouTube, Photobucket, Flickr or Vimeo, it’s got to be conceived, written and developed. Putting together the idea— “scripting” your film—that’s screenwriting!

Welcome to Screenwriting for Short Video: An Introduction for Teens, a 10-lesson introduction to writing the script for your own video. In this course, you’ll learn all the fundamentals of screenwriting, from coming up with a story idea, to developing your characters, working on dialogue, and exploring the basics of set design, action, and even publicity!

Each lesson is focused on a singular goal: providing you with the tools you need to write your own screenplay. It doesn’t matter if your film is a comedy or a tragedy, an animation or a horror film—it needs a screenplay.

By studying each lesson, playing games and participating in exercises with your friends, you’ll have the opportunity in every lesson to sharpen a new dimension of your screenwriting talent. You’ll also be given time to write, and learn how to format your screenplay just like the professionals.

In each lesson, you’ll also put on your film critic’s hat and watch a series of short videos that were produced by teens just like you! After you watch a film, you’ll score each one and then compare your reviews with your classmates. By watching films, you’ll study the details of filmmaking, and learn “what to look for” when you’re watching TV, video, movies or even commercials. Exercises like “conversational pairs” provide plenty of comic relief—screenwriting is fun!

In the end, you’ll be charmed with all you know and strut your own stuff during “Premiere Night” –when your classmates act out your screenplay (you’ll be the Director!) and our own unique awards, the Frannies, are awarded.

Screenwriters are Hollywood’s unsung heroes. And they are Hollywood’s best storytellers. Behind the dizzying rip of Jack Black’s guitar riffs in The School of Rock, Juno’s goofy infatuation, and Jon Heder’s awkward dance in Napoleon Dynamite, a screenwriter crafted the dialogue, helped pitch the film to studio executives, and communicated a vision of how characters should behave and move.

Everyone knows that JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series. But a screenwriter named Steve Kloves adapted her novels for 7 of the 8 films, translating Rowling’s hefty cast of characters and intricate plotting into one of the world’s most-loved story sensations.

What kind of sensation are you going to create?

Grab your pen and crack open that journal! Your “millions of hits” might be just a few pages away!

Structure of each weeks meetings and activities:

To make this course easy to teach in an after school setting, we designed a format that promotes active learning, discussions and clear goals for high school students.

Every lesson in Screenwriting for Short Video begins with an overview of the goals for the day and the timeline in which students should accomplish these tasks:

Activity 1 – Notes to the Student
This section included in both Facilitator's guide and Student Production Book is a hybrid of activities, including a brief review of material covered in the previous lesson, a “lecturette” or shared reading that covers new material in the lesson, and time for questions and answers. Occasionally, a brief activity supports the reading.

Activity 2 - Film Forum
Brings students together to watch a brief student-made short film, and to explore how new material covered in their notes may or may not be a factor in the screenwriter’s or filmmaker’s process. A discussion question set follows. Students will practice their higher order cognitive skills in evaluation by completing the Film Critic’s Scorecard for each film.

Activity 3 – Hands-On Activity
Innovative activities in every lesson engage students in fun, challenging tasks, such as deconstructing movie posters, experimenting with dialogue, inventing taglines, creating publicity strategies, writing film “treatments,” and many others.

Activity 4 – Unleash the WriteGeist
These 10-15 minute blocks in every lesson are set aside for students to write/work on their individual screenplays. These writing blocks immediately follow activities to help students quickly capitalize on what they’ve learned and encourage them to apply new information and techniques to their final products.

Activity 5 – Journal Jumpstart
Designed primarily to extend writing time, the “jumpstart” specifically directs students to attend to a fine point of screenwriting covered in the day’s lesson.

YouTube link to award winning teen videos

Sample Lesson

Pricing

I hope this is informative and accessible to all!

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, November 16, 2011

I never get tired of Wordle...

 

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, November 09, 2011

-Guest Post by Shelly Rafferty Withers

One game that has found its way onto the early evening couch at our house is one we call simply “Screenwriter.”

After dinner, like millions of other American families, my 15-year-old and I routinely settle down to catch a couple of hours of television. Playfully, Jake and I tease each other about “who committed the crime” “who will end up with whom” or even what crazy outcome will befall the protagonists of “The Big Bang Theory,” “CSI Miami,” or “Terra Nova.”

See, we’ve come to fancy ourselves as screenwriters: We have learned to correctly predict what’s going to happen during a TV episode (and even some commercials!) before the end of a show.

And we come by this title honestly.

Over the last year, Jake acted as my right-hand man as I wrote and constructed Community Learning’s new “Screenwriting for Short Video” course. In the course, which covers everything from plotting and action development, to characters and dialogue, Jake and I have role-played all the examples, reviewed all the films together, and even drafted some short scripts.

The result, not surprisingly, is that Jake’s become a kind of screenwriting wizard. He understands story structure; he recognizes foreshadowing devices; he’s got a newfound interest in reading movie reviews (in the New York Times, no less!); and suddenly, he’s some kind of expert in his English class when it comes to the finer points of understanding narrative.

“It’s really a cool course,” I heard him tell his friends recently as he popped in the DVD (it comes in the Course Kit). He handed out copies of the Film Critic’s Scorecard to his visiting friends. “Let’s look at this zombie movie,” he encouraged them. “Then we can compare our scores!”

I passed out the popcorn as the boys took to their task. Afterwards, one of them said, “We should be doing this in school.”

I nodded, smiling. Yes, I thought, you should.

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Lesson Structure

To make this course easy to teach in an after school setting, we designed a format that promotes active learning, discussions and clear goals for high school students.

Every lesson in Screenwriting for Short Video begins with an overview of the goals for the day and the timeline in which students should accomplish these tasks:

Activity 1 – Notes to the Student
This section included in both Facilitator's guide and Student Production Book is a hybrid of activities, including a brief review of material covered in the previous lesson, a “lecturette” or shared reading that covers new material in the lesson, and time for questions and answers. Occasionally, a brief activity supports the reading.

Activity 2 - Film Forum
Brings students together to watch a brief student-made short film, and to explore how new material covered in their notes may or may not be a factor in the screenwriter’s or filmmaker’s process. A discussion question set follows. Students will practice their higher order cognitive skills in evaluation by completing the Film Critic’s Scorecard for each film.

Activity 3 – Hands-On Activity
Innovative activities in every lesson engage students in fun, challenging tasks, such as deconstructing movie posters, experimenting with dialogue, inventing taglines, creating publicity strategies, writing film “treatments,” and many others.

Activity 4 – Unleash the WriteGeist
These 10-15 minute blocks in every lesson are set aside for students to write/work on their individual screenplays. These writing blocks immediately follow activities to help students quickly capitalize on what they’ve learned and encourage them to apply new information and techniques to their final products.

Activity 5 – Journal Jumpstart
Designed primarily to extend writing time, the “jumpstart” specifically directs students to attend to a fine point of screenwriting covered in the day’s lesson.

 

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, October 12, 2011

(Preface from our new course Screenwriting for Short Video: An Introduction for Teens)

Hardly a day goes by when we don’t read another article about the digitization of our media culture, about how videos and I-Pads are corrupting the brains of adolescents, and how cell phones have driven all of us to distraction. Simultaneously, smart phones and video cameras, MP3 players and social networking applications are an undeniable fixture of 21st century life. The question that confronts all of us—teachers, parents, community leaders and youth workers, and more—is how to harness teens’ enthusiasm for new media in ways that support their educations, their literacy and their futures?

Video—as delivered through YouTube, in particular—has captured the imaginations of a generation of teenagers, and spawned a widespread and enthusiastic interest in the film-making enterprise. For many teens, these interests are satisfied by a simple-minded point-and shoot video of their friends performing stupid human tricks. Serendipity, more than storytelling, characterizes these accidental video products.

The vast majority of videos, however, which succeed on a number of levels, do so because they are under pinned by clever conceptualization, compelling stories and plots, beautiful sets and camera work, and well planned screenplays.

Screenwriting for Short Video is a course that underlines for young people the critical, step-by-step planning and creative work essential to producing a five-to-ten minute film. With an emphasis on storytelling technique, the course re-invigorates teens’ enthusiasm for elegant writing, sharp dialogue, plot lines, quirky characters and thoughtful planning and control. Too, the course points to regular performance targets in each lesson, which cumulatively lead students to complete their brief screenplays.

Screenwriting is first and foremost a skill of writing. Consequently, students who take this course will sharpen their composition skills, as well as gain an appreciation for fiction, dialogue, spelling, grammar, colloquialisms, character development through stories, narrative technique, planning, journaling, pre-writing, and many other activities related to improving their communication skills.

The course also calls upon the evaluation skills of adolescents. In every lesson, teens screen a new film (also made by adolescents) and are given the opportunity to discuss and critique the film. On the Film Critic’s Scorecard, teens not only rate the film they watch, but they must also provide a rationale for their rating. On a cognitive level, evaluation is one of the higher–order thinking skills, and cultivating this skill encourages teens to develop insights, reasoning and powers of observation that will continue to serve them throughout their academic careers.

Most important, Screenwriting for Short Video is designed to exploit the creativity and innovativeness of its participants. The course offers many artistic and exploratory activities: from structuring movie posters to interpreting dialogue, from planning with storyboards to providing live “staged readings” of student screenplays. This empowering course recognizes the gifts and boundless energy of adolescents, and celebrates their inventiveness, imaginations, and independence.

We believe in teens!

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, October 05, 2011

If you’re thinking about creating a club or offering a movie making class there are a number of considerations.  I know the first thing running through most directors’ minds would be “Who can I find to teach this?”

After the basic logistics are worked out around curriculum and personnel, the next thing needed is a solid promotional plan. How can you get the message out to the kids you want to attend, especially if they don’t currently attend your program?

Here’s where it gets a little tricky. What incentive or motivation do they have, especially upper elementary and high school age, to stop whatever they’re currently doing to attend your program?

First think about the old adage. “Scarcity Sells.”  Promote your program as a special offering with limited space, say 15 spots.  Advertise that interested parties need to attend two informational sessions before they can apply to the program. In these sessions, your teacher will communicate that a dedicated effort is required and is the only way they can produce a decent product. 

Students need to fully commit (within reason) to the entire program for that quarter or block. Now of course you may have more spots and don’t really want to exclude participation but making it clear real work will be done sends a strong message.

Next you want to highlight the benefits of dedicating some energy to your movie making class by showing them what’s possible with student film examples.  Use your two informational sessions to run through a couple of different genres like drama or comedy just like the Emmys.

This may dissuade some students, but hopefully you’ve inspired many more and have the right mix of kids that are truly interested in being there and doing the work.

Now with your dedicated core, you can tackle the question “What kind of movie do you want to make?”   This will set in motion ideas about characters, scenes and dialogue. Now your young film makers are on their way!

After that initial year, you’ll have some of your own local films to entice students the following year.

Below are just a handful of links to film festivals that are always looking for teen films. Many have student film examples you can preview and use to kickoff your program.

Good Luck! 

Youth Film Festivals and Contests

http://www.thedirectorintheclassroom.com/festivals4.php

http://www.reelteens.org/

http://www.nffty.org/

http://247youthfilmfestival.tumblr.com/

http://www.nwfilm.org/festivals/youngfestival/

http://www.westportyouthfilmfest.org/

http://www.theyouthfilmproject.org/

http://www.towerofyouth.org/

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Dale Carnegie the master of human relations once said, "There is only one way... to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it."
 
Keeping kids in the upper grades engaged in after school poses a major challenge for site coordinators and program leaders.  But how do you combat the sheer volume of competitive activities kids encounter these days?  
 
The answer also comes from Dale, "Talk in the terms of the other person's interest."
 
Great, you’re thinking, but how does this idea apply to after school?
 
To keep kids coming back week after week, you need to focus on an area that truly interests kids...themselves!
 
Try This

So how about a project  centered around students' creating a story based on their personal experiences, with the ultimate goal of developing their idea into a movie script?
 
We've found this to work with our "Being a Screenwriter" courses.   These course stress writing from the heart and breaking the writing down into manageable bites.  Through fun group activities and brainstorming, the entire process of crafting a story is surprisingly enjoyable!

Can you see kids saying to their friends, "I'm busy after school, working on my script." That sounds intriguing, complex and possibly cool (who knows these days?) and at--a minimum--will pique some interest.

As you know from experience with successful programming, if you can get kids fully invested in the project...attendance, interest and participation will not be a problem.

The Hollywood Hook

In our "Generating Ideas for a Screenplay" Course Kit students learn the language of movies focusing on genre, theme, characters and conflict. They'll spend time brainstorming and cultivating a story idea based on their own life experiences.
 
In "Writing Your Screenplay" students hone their ideas and pick one to develop.  They'll learn the steps and format necessary for developing a full blown, authentic Hollywood script.

Now here's the real clincher: although these lessons all revolve around movies, they're really all about writing.  Your kids will be pulled in by the Hollywood hook, but in the end they'll have successfully completed a challenging writing assignment and learn first hand how satisfying and fun writing can be!  
 
A Great Offer

This topic will also be appreciated by your school partners and help to meet your goals for academic enrichment, not to mention ELA standards. To help jump start your program, we've just announced a promotion that will enable you to reach all your middle school students! 

I encourage you to take a look at the course outline and lesson samples.  You’ll be glad you did!

-By Mike DeBritz on Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Being A Screenwriter 1 and 2 comprises a series of fun, interdisciplinary classroom activities that engage learners effectively, cognitively and behaviorally. As they participate in the development of ready-to-shoot screenplays, students exercise skill sets in language arts (new vocabulary, research skills) and into discussions that help them understand concepts in other disciplines.

Primarily, however, Being A Screenwriter is focused on driving achievement toward meeting the National English Language Arts Standards, building confidence in students' writing skills and having a little fun along the way! 

In the table below, we illustrate how many of the activities and discussions in our Screenwriter courses support learner progress, understanding, and ongoing development of ELA literacy skills and creativity. 

Selected National ELA Standards	Activities in Being A Screenwriter 1 and 2
Standard 1 Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment.	In both Screenwriter 1 and 2, learners review scripts and screenplays, storyboards and film clips, in order to recognize and define the roles of screenwriters working in contemporary America.
Standard 3 Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features.	Critical thinking—asking questions, exploring theories, hypothesizing, and testing ideas, all cornerstones of building ELA competency—are part of every Screenwriter lesson.
Standard 4 Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes	At the heart of every Screenwriter lesson is the task of writing with clarity, appropriateness, and creativity in order to communicate with specific audiences.
Standard 5 Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.	A unique feature of both Screenwriter courses is the emphasis on drafting, brainstorming, free writing, review, feedback and sharing a final product with peers. The Course Kits provide writing tools to encourage students to write often, personally, and without the demands of formal classroom instruction.
Standard 6 Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.	Screenwriting places particular demands on creative writers to master dialogue, create consistent characters, frame shots and give directions. Formatting conventions—as well as preparing the final manuscript editorially—are covered in these lessons. Students often critique and discuss print and nonprint texts.
Standard 7 Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.	Learners in the screenwriting courses are encouraged to consult a wide range of sources, stories, memories, interviews, other films, and other sources to plan their screenplays. Through exercises, they become acquainted with plotting, conflict, and other genre elements. Their own works are subjected to a gentle peer review that helps them identify problems, generate new ideas, and explore questions of logic and filmmaking basics. Audience is an ever-present element of screenwriting production.
Standard 9 Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.	Through role playing in one another's screenplays, learners “act” in the guise of fictional characters, enabling them to try on new ways of speaking. The development of colorful characters—critical in every screenplay product—encourages learners to explore new selves, new languages and dialects, and new roles, including ethnic, gender and age roles, among others.
Standard 11 Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.	Through the table reading and film review activities, as well as the many informal discussion activities in both Screenwriter 1 and 2, learners share their expertise with their peers as it develops. They offer one another advice, constructive criticism, and promote the dialogues necessary for community-building.
Standard 12 Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).	Throughout the Screenwriter series, learners use their language skills, creativity, imagination, and ambition to explore how dialogue, narration, direction and visual imagery can combine to communicate and entertain. The purposes of different genres of video are discussed.