Archives de l’auteur : Children's Film Academy

Exercise 3

This was one of the happiest exercises we did. We had to listen to some music and tell whatever came to our mind. Once again, we became two different groups.

Group A

When we listened to the music, we felt so happy. We all had to say what images came to our mind. One student said she thought of a happy classroom, where the teacher is teaching happily, students are studying happily and there is joy everywhere!

Another student said , she thought of a classroom where everyone is bored. But when the music comes, the children dance with joy and when the teacher comes and tries to stop their dance, the children are initially scared, but then, listening to the music and seeing the children break into dance, she also throws away her scale and begins to dance with them. The class is filled with joy!

It was such a happy idea that everyone decided to shoot that one ! And had a blast shooting it  !

Group B

Our group listened to the joyful music . To one boy, it evoked  the happy experience of riding a cycle to the library, hunting for a favorite book and settling down to read it under a tree! We all liked the idea so much .We thought of all the sensations that we experience when we ride our cycles through the village – the feel of the breeze, the clouds in the sky, the leaves and the trees, the crunch of the gravel, the pedal’s rattling sound, the wheel’s whirring sound, the cycle bell (but the cycle we shot on, did not have a bell!); the cool, dark library and the feel of the sun filtering through the leaves on to the pages of the book as we read with joy our favorite book ! But, easy as it was to come up with all the sensations, it was really difficult to shoot as it involved a lot of hard work: shooting in different spots, cycling over and over again till the shot was good. But very satisfying too. We ran in to some luck when in one of the lanes, we discovered a flock of ducks waddling by. We were so delighted to just look at them that we decided to shoot with them to show the joy felt by the boy. Ambadi was the name of the cycle rider, and he had to cycle carefully so that he entered the frame after them or along with them, but not after they had left the frame! The uncle who looked after the ducks  got them to move along certain paths but after waddling up and down three times, the ducks decided they did not like acting !! While our cycle riding hero could not exercise any such choice ! We also missed several shots as our session for the day came to a close. We are going to be more planned next time.

Exercise 2

We formed a fresh group for every exercise. This time we called out A and B. All the As became one group and Bs became another, 6 of us in each group.

In this exercise, each group had to choose one sense. Group A chose the sense of touch and Group B chose the sense of sight.

Group A : Sense of touch

Our group chose the sense of touch. So we went around in our school grounds with our Sir from CFA,  Arun Bhaskar, touching things and feeling them again. Then, one participant suggested he would like to show the sensation felt in the touch of flowers and leaves. So he took his first shot , in which one participant feels the leaves and flowers in the centre of our school. Then , another participant showed the feel of a single leaf, another showed the delicate feel of a flower; seeing that, yet another student thought of the feel of water and sand when the plants are watered, and even the smell that comes from the soil when we water them; and that reminded another participant of the feel of new sand in the flowerpots !

We explored so many sensations that come from the sense of touch as we explored just our little garden!

Group B : Sense of sight

We discussed how we feel the world through our senses . Since some film clips had been projected, the projector was still on. In the strong beam of light, my friend started making some graceful dance movements by her hands and beautiful shadows were formed on the screen. We were so fascinated to see that. Then,  another friend also joined in with her hands. This is how we discovered our first shot : shadows and light. As we stepped out for the next shot, we noticed our own shadows in the sunlight and that became our second shot. The third participant saw the silver streamers shooting light in the sun, and thus, we discovered our third shot. The next one saw the shadows made by these streamers  and because they seemed to dance, it connected with our earlier shots too.Then one participant said, she would like to take the shot of the red leaves that were allowing the sun to stream through them. Those were really beautiful. When we tried to take that shot, we discovered the sun peeping through the leaves. That went so well with our earlier shots.But it was really difficult to shoot that one as the sun at that time was straight overhead! So our CFA Sir, Shibin Balkrishnan had to help us take that shot. It turned out to be a really beautiful shot.

Soon, we all were noticing patterns of shadows everywhere!

Editing of Exercise 2

We were introduced to the editing process. On the Adobe Premiere Pro, our Sir from CFA, Shibin Balkrishnan  showed us how to put the shots together. We chose the good shots , the order of the shots and the duration too, as some were too long!