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.

From the Archive - Antony Gormley

In 1999, Antony Gormley's 'Field for the British Isles' was erected in Colchester by Firstsite.

Signals made a documentary about the exhibition and the public reaction to it. We thought we'd share this with you as it seems rather topical...

Anthony Gormly-The Field from signals archive on Vimeo.