This page last modified on Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Original content Copyright © Thomas R Gough, All Rights Reserved.
Do not reproduce without permission.
KWN production photos © Glenwood Public School
KWN awards night photos used with permission

KWN or Kid Witness News in a video program sponsored by Panasonic. While not strictly GSC productions, Glenwood (School) owes its involvement in KWN to the GSC, and as Glenwood has amassed considerable honours not to mention prizes through the program, that's something to be very pleased about.

As part of Richard III: a multi-media experience, a short film entitle Richard the Third Grader was made. This was essentially the story of Richard III transposed to a school playground, with the battle over a tennis ball and control of the handball squares. With thins setting, the story remained a series of machinations to become "king".

At the time I was also running the Sydney South West Drama Festival, and decided to open the festival up to video inclusions, Richard the Third Grader being the kick-off screening.

Sydney South West performing arts consultant Sally Hogan was in the audience for the Festival's matinee and was impressed by the screening, and when Panasonic extended feelers into the education community when launching KWN Australia in 2004, she recalled the film and put the name of our school forward as a potential participant.

Great move!

I had my first Year 6 class in 2004 - part of a "Stage" class, which means a combination of Yr 5/6. Luckily it was another bunch of "characters" full of creativity and beautiful ideas.

During the backboard "ideas" session, one student suggested the title "Hippies Save the Trees", which was surprising to me. Where did these eleven year-olds get a notion of hippies? The "save the trees" angle seemed very sound, though, with plenty of "message" opportunities, which seemed likely to produce a competitive video. This title was voted in as our movie, and the playbuilding began.

The read about the playbuilding process, go to the here and look at it in detail. I often use Peter Moore's book When Are We Going To Do More Drama for games and activities leading up to the narrative construction.

The play built itself very quickly, with diverse scene involving a hippie family, giant alien tree-eating slugs, cheerleaders, bikies and a Guru named Shakespeare.

Research included the Lost in Space episodes "The Promised Planet" and "The Space Destructors" which both included space hippies, especially the former. It was fascinating to watch the kids taking notes from these notoriously camp installments of that show, yet it was highly effective, and soon all the right argot found it's way into the dialogue.

I also had a bluescreen constructed (by Michael Darmody) as by this time we had acquired Final Cut Pro which could do all those bluescreen type effects. Slowly and surely Glenwood was marching towards a very professional video standard. Rebecca Turnbull made some giant slug costumes, and the cast provided a wide array of Hippie clothes. I found several places on the net that specialised in Hippie accoutrements, including peace symbol necklaces, peace flags of various arrays, and a big collection of wigs. We even had our own self-propelled "mystery mobile" - a toy combi-van for the Hippies to drive on a paper mache landscape.

Filming took place at Simmo's Beach reserve near the school. Shooting took a while and involved another trip out there a few weeks later.

Around this time the TV show Totally Wild got wind of the production and sent a film crew along to see some of the action. They filmed the kid rehearsing a scene in the Hippie Hut - a large set made from aluminium cabana frames covered with that rusk-like fencing stuff you can buy in rolls. This was great, not only from the kids POV - they got to be on TV, but it meant that that scene was rehearsed over and over. By the time we came to shoot the real thing, there were a multitude of new ideas that they'd tried out so that the scene really came alive.

This episode was repeated two-weeks ago as i write this (lots of kids running up to me in the playground telling me i was on television)

There was one amazing little moment too where we shot a character looking over the edge of the hut and seeing the slugs below and becoming alarmed. He did it find but I suggested that the scene be shot again, and that this time he should really let go. Wow! Brilliant! An amazing second take that is of course in the final cut.

Other interiors included the Guru's cave. This was just a roll of silver insulation material crumpled up and painted a rocky brown. The caves in some episodes of Star Trek looked like crumpled foil so that's where the inspiration came from.

Campbelltown Council also let us borrow their small stadium for the race scenes. We lucked out, landing on the one free day it had on its entire calendar.

There was ana extensive editing and effects period to manage all the bluescreen stuff. I think that this providec an excellent insight into modern film creation to the kids. The hippie father, for example, wtaches the slu mobile race by duriung the big race. In actuality, he was just looking out the van window to a piece of blue board (Cynthia the Gym lady kindly let us borrow her van for the hippiemobile interiors).

So after all that, did it win?

No!

Well, it did win Best Special Effects, but the winner was our other movie, shot casullay at lunchtimes with little planning and few effects, and editied quite late that oriogianlly I gave up putting it in. It was The Boy Who Broke Every Rule in the School - about Good Boy and Bad Boy and the consquences of following the school rules, all dome like a silent film (you see the Richard III influence again).

That little movie, which also won Best Videography (I just let the kids take turns using the camera!), netted the school over ten thousand dollars in prizes. Along with Hippies' win - which was the first cab off the rank which got the prize evening of to a great start for us), we bought lots of AV gear which has helped us make the rest of our outstanding school productions.

Glenwood took out the national grand prize in 2005 and 2006 as well. More on those prouctions later.