How many weeks has it been? Anyway...Materials, Part 1!

Oh my, it's been such a long time since I've written anything, but we haven't been idle!  First we went on holiday - a week in Lisbon, which was fantastic, can't recommend it enough.  Then we moved house.  That was about a month ago, and I think I'm just about recovering.

In the meantime we've done homeschooling days on Great Explorers (mainly Vasco da Gama, part of our Portugal preparation) and planting grass seed, which isn't really growing because it hasn't rained and we don't have a watering can, so it tried to sprout and then turned brown.  Poor grass.  And lots of other fun stuff.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to post about some of it soon. We also had a meeting with the school, who seem quite happy with Emily's work but suggested we might do more tie-ins with the school curriculum.  So...

This term they're doing Materials at school.  I wonder how they can make this topic last a term, because we're struggling to make it last longer than a day!  But we had a great day, and we also have a plan for next week.

We went to the Tate Modern on the South Bank.  The Turbine Hall is always great, and this time was no exception - a giant winged installation made with sheets of wood and draped with fabric.  Materials all over the place!

We also explored a couple of the galleries.  We found a great silent video about a lightbulb factory in China which was fascinating to watch, as well as lots of interesting art.  Emily's favourite was a wooden board which had plastic bags full of paint and secured with wire and string placed on it, then covered with a thick layer of plaster.  When it was dry the artist hung it on the wall and invited people to shoot at it (not while we were there sadly, many years ago) and burst the bags of paint.  Quite a few Materials, all in one place, so convenient.

Then we found a room full of installations that were great for a Materials project.  There were several forms of wood - old dead tree trunks, twiggy brushwood, and planed and geometrically cut wood.  There were rough stones and polished stones and metal.  There was even a drippy sculpture moulded in lead which we named The Deflated Elephant.

After we'd eaten our lunch, we wandered over the Millennium Bridge and onto the Thames foreshore, where we found shells, bones, pottery, bricks, pebbles, glass, you name it.  Emily had a great time wandering and collecting things.  And the weather and the view were both great :)

Finally, our inevitable gift shop purchase: a great book featuring 10 real animals that you can mix and match to create fantastical beasts!

More soon! x

Week 10 : The movie business

And so on to my week.

Hello, it’s the dad here. I wanted to get in on this home schooling malarkey from the start, but working full time put the kibosh on that. And so I thought, until I was able to take the day off work. As Emily and I had spent some time when she was younger making short movies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geKpCWoVtUQ being one of the most fun examples) I suggested to her that we take a break from her space project and do a week about the movie business and cinema.

Emily, as she always is, was excited to learn about something new. We had a chat about what we wanted to do for our mini project. We thought we would do learning about the movie business in the morning, and then in the afternoon create another short film. Emily spent most of the few weeks before the 30^th Jan coming up with ideas for the plot of her movie. I had created a beginners guide to film PowerPoint presentation for some work colleagues years ago and still had that on my computer so on the 23^rd Jan we reviewed it and Emily asked lots of questions. She seemed to get really excited about the idea of filming things from different angles and the concept of story boarding. 

I contacted the BFI IMAX (http://www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-imax) about the possibility of Emily and I getting a tour behind the scenes, without much hope and found the staff to be extremely helpful. They arranged for us to go into the projector room and see how it all works. The only trouble was that they could only do it at 9:30, so Denise couldn’t come as she would be dropping off V. To make the most of the visit we prepared some questions for the projectionist the night before and I printed those questions out and Emily dug out her old clipboard.

So when the 30^th arrived Emily and I set off nice and early. Emily looked at the map on my phone to see which was the best way to get to the BFI IMAX. We got on a bus and I showed Emily a brief video about the various jobs that people do on a movie set when they are filming. It seemed to be designed for kids as it was in the style of Dr. Seuss, but Emily thought it was boring and it was hard to hear the words as they were trying to go to fast for her to take in all the information:

 http://vimeo.com/videoschool/lesson/431/whos-who-on-a-movie-crew

Emily was very excited when she arrived. We had a quick look at the Thames and then made our way to the IMAX. One slight hitch was the fact that no one was around. I knocked on the doors, but there was no one there. Emily snuck away from me and found that the emergency exit was ajar. We snuck in and found a member of staff who showed us where we could wait.

Emily practiced her questions and copied the BFI Logo while we waited. Then we met Michael the projectionist.

Emily got in the little staff lift to get to the projection room and got immediately shy and quiet. She became very mumbley. The projectionist was a very gentle quiet man, but this didn’t seem to dissuade Emily from her look of dread. We went into the projection room and it was very hot. Emily asked a couple of questions, but I had to repeat them as she was too quiet. She was confused; she thought she was going to see behind the screen, she didn’t understand why she was still in front of it. We found out that the bulbs cost about five thousand pounds and when they blow up his boss doesn’t speak to the projectionist for a couple of days.

We looked at the film projector first and then the new digital projector. Kindly the projectionist gave Emily five or six 3 frame spare film cuttings.

This is Interstellar loaded on the film projector. Emily asked about how many speakers they have and the projectionist played the demo the IMAX runs to show off their speakers. Emily wasn’t impressed, she said ‘yeah, I’ve seen it before.’

 

We looked at an old projector they use as a backup in the corner. After seeing the lens and how it all worked Emily settled a bit more, it was a piece of equipment she understood, it reminded her of the camera. We found out that the digital projectors get the movies sent to them on external hard drives. Emily finished her list of questions, the projectionist didn’t know how much popcorn they made every year, but it was lots and that seemed to satisfy Emily.

We found that they have school visits frequently visiting the projection room. They also have open days in the summer where you can see the projectors running.

On our way back we stopped off at the BFI Southbank, but the film library was shut as it was too early. Emily asked why they call it a movie business. I explained that they make the movies to make money and they sell them at high prices at the cinema, then you can buy the DVD and usually they sell books and merchandise about the movies to make more money. I asked Emily whose merchandise she thought made the most money. She thought it was Star Wars and explained how it was one of the first movies to really make money with merchandising. So on the way back we stopped off at a movie merchandise shop: https://forbiddenplanet.com/stores/

We had a look around to see if Emily’s theory stacked up. Emily counted the movie that had the most shelves. She found that Superhero movies had the most shelves and she said she liked the art supplies they sold the best. We tried to work out what was the most popular type of item for sale. They had lunchboxes, art boxes, toys, games, masks and costumes and Emily thought she would get a Batman tin lunchbox to store all her art supplies in when she got home.

We got some lunch and filmed Emily’s movie. She wanted to do a story about an imaginary friend, I tried to give her some tips, but she had a ‘very strong artistic vision’ I loaded up the videos into the computer for Emily to edit. Now I’ve read this blog before and Denise has been going on about how she forgets playtime. So I thought I’d let Emily do some drawing while I got them uploaded onto the computer, of course this is when Denise comes in and says that it doesn’t sound like I’ve been doing any educating at all. I did a basic cut and showed Emily how to use Adobe Premier. She saw how to cut clips and move the clips around and I showed her some of the tricks. Emily added a title and music.

Once it was mostly assembled Emily got bored and Denise decided she would do some maths questions with Emily while I went to get Vaughn. Here is Emily’s video: