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 30th 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 23rd 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 30th 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:
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.
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: