My students need video cameras to create, shoot, and edit short films.
$1,038 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
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Visual literacy matters more today than perhaps at any time in our history. We are constantly bombarded by images and sounds that have a variety of purposes: to tell stories, to sell us things, and to inspire us. Today, we can also tell our own stories using complex, powerful visual language.
I teach in a strong neighborhood school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
My students come from a wide variety of ethnic and academic backgrounds, and in my film class, I have the widest possible spectrum of students. Over half are Hispanic, and 82% receive free lunch. They range from grades 10-12, and have a huge range of academic abilities. Some of my students will spend next year in competitive universities, and some struggle to find compelling reasons to attend academic classes every day.
My film class provides students with a comfortable, yet challenging, middle ground in which we approach writing and visual language with compelling and complex narratives. This year, we have focused on films featuring alternate realities: Spirited Away, The Matrix, and Pan's Labyrinth, and to supplement these texts, we have studied Japanese mythology, Grimm's Fairy Tales, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and the Spanish Civil War.
My Project
Using these rugged digital cameras, my students will be able to put their understanding of cinematic techniques into action. Groups of 4-6 students will storyboard, script, and shoot their own short films of under ten minutes.
Once the planning stages have been completed, groups will sign out these cameras, shoot their films, and edit their work using the school's existing set of laptops and free editing software. I also envision a school film festival in which student groups can share the work they've done.
My students have worked incredibly hard this year.
They have learned how low key lighting can establish mood. They have learned how the angle of the camera can give the subject power or take that power away. They've learned how cuts can symbolically connect two characters...and yet all of these powerful understandings of how visual language functions could be so much stronger if they were able to tell their own stories in more meaningful ways. Please help us make this a reality.
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Eletz and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
