Precursors to the Film Medium

Take two! Middle school and high school students learn what it takes to film and produce videos. Use these activities to challenge young cinematographers to learn the parts of a camera, filming techniques, and practice using the...

Students create a claymation video of a simple story.  In this digital arts instructional activity, students plan a simple story, develop a storyboard, create characters and props out of clay, use a web cam to film frame-by-frame...

Persistence of Vision? The Phi Phenomenon? Zoetropes? Camera Obscura? Kinetograph? What part do these concepts and inventions play in the history of movies? Find out with a short video that launches an informative playlist on film history.

Light up your film history instruction with an examination of the contributions of the Lumière brothers. Their cinématograph, as well as the devices of other inventors, are the focus of the third episode from a playlist on film history.

There is a wonderful magic that happens when artists collaborate. Kids examine storytelling through collaborative art. Inspired by Rodin's sculpture Minotaur, Daria Martin and Anna Halprin create a filmed dance sequence. Kids analyze the...

Students identify, research and write about their hero, creating a MY HERO Web page, and develop short media piece which be turned into a film.

Students investigate the art of screenwriting and visual storytelling in this introductory instructional activity on films provided by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Emphasis is placed on the study of Mike Rich and "Finding Forrester".

Students watch and analyze a film of an Appalachian folktale. They define trickster and anti-hero, view and discuss the film, complete a handout, compose an original film review, and debate each character's behavior.

Work this scene adaptation project into your unit on Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac. After comparing a text and its film adaptation, budding playwrights set out to compose their own screenplays for a scene in Cyrano de...

High schoolers are introduced to a project about documentary films. They view documentaries and choose a response project to complete selecting from among journal writing, making an original documentary and/or completing an art project.