24 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday April 18, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Eastview students try their hand at Hollywood By Claire Halley, Avery Longmore, Paige Randall and Lauren Rinaldo, GRADE 7, EASTVIEW P.S. F or the past few exciting weeks, Ms. Selnes' class 78-1 from Eastview Public School has been very busy creating their creative Claymation figures and wonderful backdrops for their recent debut in creating their own animated short movies. Working with the largest and most exciting mobile film studio in all of Canada, The Director's Cut from CBC, we were able to complete our own fantastic movies on Tuesday, April 8. Our classroom was creatively transformed into a hectic studio filled with expensive equipment such as video cameras, laptops, and many busy directors. With the help from Julia The Directors Cut representative, we were taught how to create motion using continuous photos and we could hardly believe that it took more than 45 photos to create a scene for just one conversation. By adding different sound effects and our own voices, we finished our movies. This workshop helps to develop and promote writing and using digital technology in our classroom. More specifically, it reflects our new curriculum expectations outlined under Media Literacy. During this experience we each had different and very important jobs, one person took care of the camera, two people were "animators" and the last person controlled the computer. In order to prepare for this special day, we completed a series of tasks. First, we formed our groups of four or five people and discussed our characters, the plot and the settings. Then, we learned about the different camera shots and angles that were needed to shoot our movies. For example, we discussed whether we should use a "bird's eye view" or a "close-up view" with a "medium shot" or "long shot." Finally, we started to make our clay figures, which consisted of animals, people, and other interesting scenery. We also carefully made colourful backdrops; we painted, sketched, coloured, and used construction paper. Our movies are all original and took a lot of hard work and imagination to complete successfully. Something we learned that was very exciting was that in a previous year a student received a large amount of money for his animated short movie. This fun-filled day allowed our class to use their incredible imaginations and take part in something not many regular children today are able to do. We look forward to watching our claymation films on a special DVD that is being burned especially for us, also the movies will be able to be viewed in six to eight weeks, on the CBC website. In a month's time, be sure to tune in to CBC's The Outlook on Saturday mornings to watch for our marvelous animated shorts called The Cupcake, The Life of a Popstar Who is Forced to Become a Rockstar by Her Evil Stepmom ... Musical, Rapunzel Remix, Milk and Mutants, I am Dinosaur and The Mystery of The Random Noise. We would like to thank, Julia, of The Director's Cut, our teacher (Ms. Selnes), and CBC studios for making this possible. You never know, one of our animated shorts could win the animated short category at the 2009 Academy Awards. We'll start planning our acceptance speeches now ...