Have you ever wondered how your favourite movie or drama was made?
Aspiring film makers from New Town Secondary got their hands on cameras and editing tools to learn about film making. From conceptualising a storyboard to editing a video, they explored video production as part of the school’s Applied Learning Programme (ALP) in Visual Communication.
What was exciting for them was to learn the ropes from Mr Melvyn Goh, an alumnus of New Town Secondary and also the Executive Producer and Editor of Captivate Productions. Mr Goh shared his expertise and guided the students on producing a short video.
To start off the project, the students teamed up to plan their storyboard.
Here’s Russell Lim (right), penning down his thoughts as his teammates chipped in ideas for their promotional video assignment.
“Standby, roll camera…and action!”
Russell and friends were excited to go around the school to shoot their video with their iPads.
“Hmmm…… Let’s see how this works!”
The first stop was the Art gallery where Russell learned how to frame a shot, keeping the “rules of third” composition technique in mind which he picked up from Mr Goh’s class.
“Put your hands up in the air!”
Keeping the lighting condition and the environment settings in mind, Russell and Marc (centre) directed their teammate, Sean (left), to strike a pose as he framed the shot.
“Round and round we go!”
Russell experimented with different types of composition techniques and creative actions so that the visuals would be interesting and engaging for the viewers.
Besides applying good camera angle techniques, the students also learned how to give the visuals depth.
While the boys wanted some action in their video, the girls chose to do a creative promotional video.
There was no time to be camera shy for Karis Koh (right). She was confident speaking in front of the camera. Together with her team mates, they applied the different camera framing techniques.
As soon as the aspiring film makers are done with the shots, they gathered back to the creative lab to piece the videos into a story.
They also learned a new topic – film editing. Mr Goh explained the different types of video editing styles that they could explore for their videos.
“It’s time to put on our thinking caps!”
Russell gathered his team mates to discuss the order of visuals before editing their video.
At the end of the session, the students presented their work as Mr Goh gave his opinions on what makes a good edit.
“Editing a video is not just about placing visuals together; it requires thoughtful planning to create a masterpiece. And I am glad to see the great efforts by these students in producing the videos,” said Mr Goh who was impressed by their ability to complete their task creatively within a short period of time.
With the completion of their video project, the students were intrigued and inspired to produce more videos in future!
They were also given the opportunity to make use of the skills that they have learned to create introduction videos for the school’s Secondary One orientation. Their video and animation works were also featured during school’s assembly and showcased at the school’s ALP board.
