The Award-winning Film 'Time Report' Nominated for Best School Production 2013

The children from Perryfields School have become real celebrities after winning the First Light Award for Best Film by Under 12s. Now they have another awards ceremony to attend  as their amazing short film 'Time Report', which is a project funded by First Light and The Ernest Cook Trust, is nominated for Best School Production at Limelight Film Awards 2013! 

The young filmmakers are passing on their message about preserving the environment by telling the story of a reporter travelling through time and reporting on the ecological state of Earth at different time periods. 

You can see what the news will look like in year 2091 by watching their show broadcasted directly from a space station. 

The young talents, with the support of Signals Media Arts Centre, came up with the script, constructed the set and props, which included a space station built from recycled materials, shot the film, made the sound effects and learned more about working with camera, green screen, sound, directing, writing, acting and editing.

Their efforts, enthusiasm and brilliant work didn't stay unnoticed and on 19th March 2013, 'Time Report' was awarded at First Light Awards ceremony in London! We can't describe the joy and excitement in the air so instead we will show you their happy faces. 

Recently the film was screened as part of Kino Flow: Colchester Children and Families Film Festival at Firstsite, Colchester. 

Now the school children have another opportunity to showcase their work and receive recognition from the industry. They will walk on the red carpet on 6th of June at Troxy along with 500 other filmmakers, celebrities, film and media personalities, artists and performers for the Limelight Film Awards 2013. 

"The standard of entries were also very high making the shortlisting an impossible task" say Limelight.

We are very proud of them and we know they deserve the award. : ) 

First Light Awards Excitement

The short film 'Time Report' is one of the nominees for Best Film by Under 12s at the First Light Awards 2013. It is a creation of the children from Perryfields Junior School in Chelmsford, made with the support of Signals Media Arts Centre and the professional filmmakers Emma Curtis and Jane Gull.

Young talents who took part in the First Light projects aiming at people from disadvantaged background will have the chance to receive a recognition by the film industry and a platform to showcase their work.

The ceremony this year is in The ODEON, Leicester Square, London on 19th March. Every year it is attended by prominent people from the film industry and celebrities. Judges include Matt Smith, Martin Freeman and Sir Alan Parker.

'Time Report' is a great illustration of the children's talent, hard-work and creativity. The film offers an interesting look at global warming and is a combination of the young filmmakers' interests in environment and time travel. 

This is Jacob amazed at the UBC television studio gallery. 

“The Young Filmmakers created and preformed interesting characters, props and costumes were made during lunch time sessions. This film really expresses the group creativity. They worked very hard to achieve a complex film and there are some truly lovely moments in it.”

Lisa Wright Signals Education Co-ordinator and project Tutor

This project was Supported by First Light & the Earnest Cook Trust.

Green Screen Test

We recently completed our 8th session of Time Report with children from Perryfields Junior School and filming is now well underway! Last week we posted a video of Craig who is acting the part of the Weather Reporter in our futuristic TV news show. We've been using green screen technology to place the actors into different scenes. We do this by filming the scene against a large green screen and lighting the shot in such a way as to get rid of any shadows. We also have to gaffa tape the green screen so it's really taut, meaning no wrinkles or creases on the green fabric. In post production, we then take out the green background and replace it with video footage or a stock image so it looks like the actor is actually in that scene (though they haven't actually left the classroom!)

We've knocked up a very rough test using the green screen function in iMovie 11 so that you can see how the video we posted last week of Craig as the Weather Reporter might look in the final film (make sure you watch it in 720p). The new version of iMovie makes this so simple to do, we'll be training up our group of young filmmakers so they can do this themselves!

Cool? We think so!

We've also been filming the exterior scenes of the school where our roving Time Reporter Zara (played by Sofia) interviews a school child, Kurt (played by Kurt) about the earth's ecological problems in 2012. Remember, our film is set in 2092 so Zara's costume is made out of left over bits and bobs including a rather fetching hat made of carrier bags.

What's the weather like?

Yesterday was our 7th session of Time Report and we filmed all of the scenes with the Weather Reporter. The part of the Weather Reporter is being played by Craig, who has Down's Syndrome. In our film, the Weather Reporter is sent to report on hurricanes in Norfolk in the year 2092. He also has to deliver his weather report in a blizzard and torrential rain! Yesterday was spent breaking up bits of polystyrene into tiny balls to look like snow. It took a very long time! We then filmed Craig against a green screen where we showered him with our fake snow, it was great fun for everyone but very messy! You can watch Craig's excellent performance here:

All the footage the children recorded yesterday will now be selected for the edit. Once the group have chosen all the clips they want to use, we will transform this footage in the edit program Final Cut Pro to take out the green background and replace it with a freezing, wintry scene. We'll then add arctic wind sound effects to complete the shot.

And if the current weather reports are anything to go by, we'll be able to film our own snowy backgrounds soon!

Time Report - Filming Begins!

Yesterday was our 6th session of our First Light Movies project, 'Time Report' at the Perryfields Junior School in Chelmsford, Essex. We have been working with children from the school to create an exciting film, 'Time Report', that's set in a futuristic TV studio and addresses issues of climate change and pollution.

The children have been working very hard with tutors Emma Curtis and Jane Gull to create the script, storyboard and make all the props and costumes. Yesterday morning was spent painting a giant dinosaur head for Dippy the Diplodocus, finishing off the news desk, sticking rubbish onto costumes and learning lines. Everyone is doing a terrific job of getting into their characters!

The afternoon was spent setting up the green screen and filming all the scenes with our TV news presenter 'Max'. The part is being played by Lewis who did a great job of remembering his lines and acting as a confident, serious news presenter.

The children have also been learning camera and production skills. They were quite surprised by how long it takes to film something and get it right, especially when they'd filmed all the scenes as a wide shot then realised they'd need to film the same scenes all over again, but this time as a mid shot! They also had to problem solve when it came to recording sound as there was a very noisy P.E class going on outside. Sofia and Jacob (pictured below) took it in turns to crouch below the desk and record Lewis speaking by using an H4 Sound Recorder. They also learnt about syncing sound and had lots of fun seeing who could clap the loudest!

We'll be filming more scenes again next week, this time with the Time Reporter (played by Sofia) and Dippy the Diplodocus (played by Sam). We're going to lend our office pot plants to help create a Jurassic landscape against the green screen, plus the school have a volcano we can use too. We'll keep you updated on how things progress with the project, but it's coming together very nicely.

Time Report Session Three

Yesterday, Emma and Lisa completed Session Three with our 'Time Report' film group at the Perryfields Junior School. It was one of our last pre-production sessions with the group, who have been designing how the characters, sets and props should look in their forthcoming film.

Here is a little video we made introducing you to some of the children in our group and their hard work:

This exciting project has been funded by First Light Movies. First Light works with young people from a variety of backgrounds, developing skills in media production. They identify and nurture talented young people and enable them to achieve their potential through targeted training activities. Working closely with industry partners, we are able to offer realistic progression routes for young people to find employment within the creative sector. First Light works with over 5,000 young people aged 5-25 every year providing opportunities to learn the craft of filmmaking from industry professionals (like Signals).

Going Back in Time...

Last week, Signals took ten lucky children from the Perryfields Junior School in Chelmsford on an exciting trip to Layer Marney Tower. The children have been working with Signals on a filmmaking project called 'Time Report' which has been funded by the lovely folk at First Light Movies and the Ernest Cook Trust. For the next 10 weeks, we'll be training these children up to become young filmmakers, showing them how to use a camera, record sound, edit video and act on the screen.

We have been working with the school children to come up with a film script based on the idea of creating a futuristic news report. Here's the story they've come up with so far...

The year is 2091 and humans are living on a space station that orbits a polluted earth. A journalist, the ‘Time Reporter’, is sent into time and space by a news show to find out about how the planet earth has been used over the years, and to find the cause of the current ecological problems. The Time Reporter interviews lots of different creatures and people including a dinosaur, a Tudor farmer, a present day school child and an alien trying to find out how the planet earth got in such a state. Back in the studio, there are a few technical problems, which the Director and Technician try to sort out. They decide that to save planet earth, they are going to break all the rules and make a DVD of the Time Report to send back to the present day school child, so that the people of 2011 can act now to save their planet.

So last week's trip to Layer Marney Tower was a fantastic opportunity to meet some Tudor people and learn all about Tudor life so we can include some of our newfound knowedge into the film. We learnt some amazing facts, including...

Did you know that chickens don't lay as many (if any eggs) during the winter months?

Stinging nettles were the Tudors' most precious herb? They used it for all sorts of things including making cloth, medicine and for eating!

Animal poo was collected and used for fuel!

On All Hallows Eve (or Halloween to us modern day people) the Tudors would have spent the night on their knees praying in the church. But the next day was All Saint's Day and was the biggest, most holy festival in the Tudor calendar.

We spent the day at Layer Marney, exploring all over the ground and meeting the farm animals including the horses, goats and sheep. The children all had a great time and will be recapping everything they learnt in tomorrow's third filmmaking session back in the school.