AASSA GIN Film Festival

(Submission instructions are

at the bottom of this page!)

An ongoing student created film festival will run throughout the conference.  Videos produced by the school teams will be shown as well as other films and video resources related to our conference objectives.

Film is an incredibly powerful tool for our media savvy generation. Each team of students is invited to submit a clear and concise short film, of up to 2 minutes in length before the conference begins. This enables all of the delegates an opportunity to know more about what projects other schools are developing. The film may describe the team's project at their school, or be a public service announcement that “shares a message that they feel must be heard.”

Film Festival Guidelines

Each school has the option to submit a film of up to 2 minutes long before the conference starts. A panel of judges made up of professionals and peers will assess how each film supports the Conference theme of Our Choice. Our Future! All films submitted will be shown during the conference.

Film Festival Ideas


Here are some possible options for creating your film

1. A Public Service Announcement (or PSA) is a short commercial that informs about issues and inspires action. A typical PSA is about 90 seconds long.
2. A Documentary is a film that documents real life. For our festival, your documentary should be about an activity that your school or organization within your school has done to raise awareness or work towards solving a global problem. These documentaries should be no longer than 2 minutes.
3. A Narrative film is a story. Your narrative should tell a story that is based around solving a social or environmental issue. This can be handled in any way that you’d like – the more creative the better. However, the final product should be no more than 2 minutes.

Creating a Video

In the guidelines below, we will guide you through the steps of creating a video for the GIN Film Festival using a PSA format as an example:

Pre-Production Phase

“Pre-Production” refers to the planning phase. In order to create a good PSA, pre-production will involve a well planned out concept, interesting visuals, and a well researched idea.

1.  Choose a topic. This can be anything that we’re identifying as a Global Issue. If you are looking for an idea to start with, you could choose a topic in Rischard’s High Noon: 20 Global Issues 20 Years to Solve Them.

Rischard’s 20 Global Issues

2.   Narrow your idea down. Creating a well-crafted PSA is different than creating a well-crafted essay or position paper. The goal of a PSA is not to prove a point or even make a comprehensive argument. There are two main goals of a PSA:

• Raise awareness.
• Inspire action

3.  Plan your attack. Decide what aspect of your issue is the most meaningful. What are the most troubling or surprising facts?

4.  Script. Write out the script for your PSA. This will include any written or spoken dialogue or narrative, as well as a description of the images that will accompany the words.

5.  Storyboard. A storyboard is a visual representation of your script that helps visualize the final product. Plan to have different camera angles in order to emphasize your points and pay attention to the length of the frames

.

For example:

• Close Ups are used to show reaction or emotion on a person’s face, or highlight the significance of a particular object.
• Medium Shots usually show people from the waist or chest up. They are used to create a conversational tone and represent people from a comfortable distance.
• Long Shots are taken from far away and are important for establishing location or showing action.
• Bird’s Eye Views tilt the camera down on your subject. This can be used for a variety of reasons, but is commonly used to represent something or someone as less powerful (the audience is literally looking down on them).
• Worm’s Eye Views can also be used for a variety of reasons, but are especially effective at making someone or something look more powerful (the audience is literally looking up at at/to them)

Production Phase

There are a couple of key points to remember for the production, or filming phase of your project. It would be impossible to cover all the important points in this guide, but here are some tips that will help you out:

1. One of the first mistakes that people make in filming is to start filming when you want the shot to begin. It is better to let the camera roll for a few seconds before you call ‘action’!
2. Use a tripod. A shaky camera works sometimes but more often it just looks messy- you’re not filming the Blair Witch Project.
3. Get your finger off the zoom. If you want to get closer to your subject, physically  move the camera closer.  If you want to zoom in closer (and don’t have wheels) sit your camera man (or woman) on a rolling chair and push them in the direction you want your camera to go. We only use the zoom when we can’t get the camera physically closer to the subject.
4. Make sure that you’re using good light. If you’ve got a lamp – even a desk lamp, use that instead of relying on the sort of overhead fluorescent lights that you probably have in your school. Overhead fluorescents tend to make people look flat, and light from above isn’t flattering. Lighting from the side makes people look more three-dimensional because it accentuates the attached shadows on the body and face.  
   

Post-Production Phase

Our post-production phase will be mostly about editing. Here there are no specific guidelines because different schools will have access to different editing software.  If you are new to editing, we recommend starting with iMovie HD that comes installed on every Macintosh computer.

1. Import your movie into your editing program on the computer.
2. Cut the clips in the bin (the window that they appear in) before moving them into the timeline (the window, usually at the bottom, in which you will construct your movie).
3. Place clips in the order that they should appear in the movie.
4. Cut on the action. This is an important editing convention. It means that whenever you cut from one shot to another, something should be happening on screen. For example, if a character walks off screen, don’t wait until they are completely off the screen to cut to the next shot. This will make your video much smoother.
5. Add sound. Think about what sort of music or sound effects can be used in the background to compliment your message. Imovie comes with a sound library that you can use. You can also search the internet for sounds on sites like findsounds.com.
6. Add Effects. Maybe. Don’t go crazy with the effects that come with your video editing program. It's one thing to choose to make your video black and white if you think it will make it more ‘serious’, or alter the saturation and noise to give it a ‘retro’ look. It's another thing to put ‘fairy dust’ into every clip because its cute. It's not.
7. Don’t let any shot last a single frame too long. Look at every shot and think about whether it goes on too long or not. Sometimes even cutting a fraction of a second can make a video flow much better.
8. Export. Different programs have different options for exporting your project. If you are using a mac, export your project as a .MOV file (in imovie you’ll find these options in the “Share” menu). On a PC, if you can’t export as a .mov, then export as a .AVI file. Please do not send any .WMV files. These will not be accepted.
   
   That’s it. You’re done. Now submit it to the festival, and good luck!

Some sample films

Rhino

Easter Island

Habitat build

EARCOS films

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How To Submit Your Film

Step 1:  Create a YouTube account and channel for your GIN team at: www.youtube.com/t/about_getting_started

Step 2:  Upload your video BEFORE September 30.  This can be a file  uploaded to your YouTube channel or shared with movie-making software like iMovie.

Step 3:  Be sure your uploaded video is listed as "public"

Step 4:  Email the video url to: acobo@fcaq.k12.ec

Step 5.  Your video will be added to our 2013 GIN Playlist (www.youtube.com/user/2013GIN)