Adventures in After School Learning Blog

-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, September 14, 2011

Here's another set of our train-the-trainer presentations for both "Being a Screenwriter: Generating Ideas for a Screenplay" and "Being a Screenwriter2: Writing Your Screenplay."  This should help kick off a bunch of fine productions this year!