DARE and Shoot Smart, the “Into Film” Project

Researchers from the DARE team, John Potter and Theo Bryer, have won a bid to research and evaluate “Shoot Smart”, a film-making project using Tablet devices, during the summer term, 2014. Shoot Smart is funded by Into Film, the film education charity and involves working alongside partners, Xube Ltd, a film-making company specialising in films in educational settings. The competition for funding was substantial with 42 bids submitted and only 4 projects funded. It will take place throughout the summer term with children in year 5 and year 8 working in after-school clubs and using iPads to shoot and edit short films.  John will work with the primary age groups and Theo will work with the secondary students, observing weekly workshops and working on an evaluation and research framework which will provide evidence of good practice with Tablet devices which Into Film hopes can become a resource for film-making in schools and after-school clubs across the UK.

In order to kick-start both the film-making workshops and the research, the DARE team and Xube filmmakers visited two schools currently making use of Tablet devices to learn from the children and young people about some of the advantages and challenges of working with those devices over more traditional movie production equipment.  The first visit was to Clip Club in East London, the Y5 after-school project co-ordinated by MA Media graduate, Michelle Cannon, who is currently working on a funded PhD on digital making at Bournemouth University.  The children answered questions from the researchers and filmmakers for almost an hour before getting on with their own production work, providing a valuable insight into the process and suggesting some ways of working.  Michelle wrote about the visit on the Clip Club blog here. 

The second visit was to the boys at London Nautical School who use iPads in curriculum subjects to make films.  In this school, Chris Waugh, who works with members of the English PGCE team including Theo Bryer and Morlette Lindsay, regularly uses digital media in teaching and learning and blogs about his work at Edutronic.

You can find out more about the project here at the official news release from Into Film.

We hope to post more on the DARE blog as the project progresses through the summer term, 2014.