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Interrogate Your Main Character

Whether it's a short story or short film you're creating, you need to know a few things about your main character. Try this:

Download this Pages file and interrogate your main character.

Stories Start Here

Focus on what you know. Start with a typical teenager as your main character. Let's see how many possible goals and conflicts a character like this might face:

Go HERE for a quick CHARACTER+GOAL exercise.

Now, let's make a list of stories we already know. Go HERE.

Got a Character? Let's Hold an Interrogation. With a partner or as a whole class, try this:

Questions to Ask

What does the character want to do or get? Goal?
Why does the character want it?
Why doesn't the character have it already?
What is the character willing to risk to get it?
What has happened in the past to make the character feel this way?
What is the character's personality?

Does your story have CHARACTERS, CONFLICT, STRUGGLE and a GOAL? (PDF)

Easy-Add transitions to text and other objects.pdf
Novice-VoiceOver GarageBand.pdf
Easy-Magic Move Keynote.pdf
Novice-Animate 3D chart Keynote.pdf
Novice-Digital Storytelling-with-Garageband-and-Keynote

Try This: Video Vocab

Select a challenging vocabulary word from the SAT list. Think of at least three scenes that would illustrate the meaning of the word. Take a look at a few of these student-produced videos @ gotbrainy.com

How would you show the meaning of "abrogate" or "abscond?" Try to keep the length to around 2 minutes.

Remember to include the word and its definition at the beginning and end of the movie.

Filming Basics

Great video showing how to use a video camera for recording footage that doesn't look like junk. For middle school students, the first minute of this video is what's most important. Learn how to record the ESTABLISHING SHOT, LONG and MID RANGE-SHOT and the CLOSE-UP. Students who skip over learning these types of shots will produce films where the camera follows the action and will often record much more footage than necessary. Learning how to frame a shot takes practice. Before moving onto filming fight scenes or recording a chase scene, students need to have a solid understanding of these basic shots.

Teach Story, Teach Film

Try this. Before throwing students into the deep end of creating a short film, make sure you give them some experience in creating a film that already has a clear story line. Also, make sure it can be filmed at school or with a minimum of actors and props. For this activity, all you need is a FlipVid camera or still camera that has video recording.

Download this story outline: Go to the Dance with Me story outline

For another story outline, check out these: Film This Story

DO THIS:

1. Give trio of students the story outline.

2. Students review the outline and make any modifications to the story.

3. Students create list of scenes for the story (or give students a Sample Scene List or Completed Scene and Shot List).

4. No dialogue.

5. Film in classroom, hallway or other nearby location.

6. Delete scene(s) you don't need.

7. Plug camera into computer (MacBook with iMovie 09) and import your scenes.

7. Drag and drop these Events (scenes) into a New iMovie Project.

8. Each group shares their film and looks for how each group filmed the scenes.

Most often beginning film students will record much more of a scene than necessary. The film from the above activity lends itself to another activity where each student is given a scene and told to re-shoot it using a minimum of camera angles and no sweeping moves of the camera.

1. Give pair/trio of students Character and Goal, they create the Conflict and Solution.

2. Students complete the Tree outline for their story.

3. Students create shot list. No dialogue.

4. Film.

5. Edit on camera. Delete scene(s) you don't need.

6. Plug in camera to share with class to see different ways groups solved the Conflict.

Sample Embed video

Find more videos like this on Teaching with Technology

Getting Started with Digital Storytelling

Here are three resources that will help you plan to tell an effective story. While these are intended for Digital Storytelling, they apply to all forms of story writing.

7 Elements of a Digital Story (PDF)

Tools for Visualizing Your Story (PPT)

Sample Completed VPS of Stories (PDF)

Newbery Book Story Snap-shots (PDF)

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Blogroll

Other Useful Sites

Listen to these STORIES

Download and add these stories to your iTunes Library.

Interrogate Your Main Character

Whether it's a short story or short film you're creating, you need to know a few things about your main character. Try this:

Download this Pages file and interrogate your main character.

Story Templates

Try one of these Story Templates to get started. They are Pages files. Download and open in Pages.

Stories Start Here

Focus on what you know. Start with a typical teenager as your main character. Let's see how many possible goals and conflicts a character like this might face:

Go HERE for a quick CHARACTER+GOAL exercise.

Now, let's make a list of stories we already know. Go HERE.

Got a Character? Let's Hold an Interrogation. With a partner or as a whole class, try this:

Questions to Ask

What does the character want to do or get? Goal?

Why does the character want it?

Why doesn't the character have it already?

What is the character willing to risk to get it?

What has happened in the past to make the character feel this way?

What is the character's personality?

FREE images and tutorials

Download this zip file to add a stunning set of images to your iPhoto library. These can be used for writing prompts, enhancing a Keynote presentation or as starting points for discussion of a world event or location.

Download this zip file for a set of step-by-step tutorials to improve your iLife 09 skills.