Four Grade 5/6 students are huddled around filmmaker Charles Granger’s Macbook pro, giggling uncontrollably.
The boys are watching clips from a filmmaking exercise they shot the day before, where Samuel Moore is shown lifting up two of his classmates into mid-air, and tossing them across the room with ease à la The Incredible Hulk.
“We’re going to name this Samuel’s dark side,” says Samuel, prompting more laughter.
Samuel’s super strength is, of course, an illusion, created through careful positioning, props and editing. It’s what Granger calls a no-budget special effect, and it is one of the more playful lessons he teaches in a video production workshop organized by Freeze Frame, a media arts organization.
Through the Freeze Frame on the Road/ Freeze Frame en Tournée program, facilitators lead filmmaking workshops in rural and northern Manitoba schools; École McIsaac School has been a regular stop for several years now.
From October 5 to 9, Granger and fellow Freeze Frame facilitator Leonore Bailhache ran the French-language version of the workshop with McIsaac’s Grade 5, 6, 7 and 8 French immersion students.
In small groups, the students learned how to make a film from start to finish, from developing an initial concept and storyboard to editing scenes and polishing the final cuts – and they did it all in their second language.
“It’s a medium for them to use their French, to have a production,” says Sylvie Dufour, vice-principal at McIsaac, who applied for a grant to fund the workshop.
In addition to the language benefits, the students also gain a deeper understanding of the medium of film.
“I learned filmmaking is not just shooting,” says Grade 5/6 student William Eardley. “You gotta do the props, the effects, the camera. It’s not that easy when you think about it.”
His brother Cole adds, “I learned that you can make anything that wouldn’t be possible in real life.”
The two boys, and their group members, developed a film about a homework machine. It’s every school-aged kid’s dream – you put your homework in the slot, press a button and your homework pops out the other side, completed.
