Civil RightS: Through our eyes
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About the ProjectCivil Rights: Through Our Eyes is a collaborative video, music, and dance project exploring influential leaders and ideas from the Civil Rights Movement, through the eyes of 5th grade students at King School. The students used digital storytelling to enhance their understanding of this significant historical movement, and explore the ways that issues of Civil Rights impact their lives today.
Ms. Putney's 5th grade class became Lion Productions to envision and produce Civil Rights: Through Our Eyes with the help of community artists: Sophia Petrovcic (Executive Producer), Elijah Autry (Sound Editing) and Eloe Gill-Williams (Video Production). The students worked in teams to create and film their own dance choreography and music based on ideas from the Civil Rights Movement. The video was shown at the KSMoCA (King School Museum of Contemporary Art) opening on March 10, 2016. |
How it was made
The students began by generating a list of Civil Rights Movement words as a class, which were used to inspire the content of the video, words like, "marching for freedom", "bus boycott", "Rosa Parks", "equal rights and justice", etc. To create this video the students were broken into four teams: Dance/Choreography, Videography, Music Production, and Visual Arts/Advertising
The Dance/Choreography team was asked to pick out words from the Civil Rights Movement word bank and create a dance move for each word. They then put the movements together into one sequence that could be repeated over and over. Through this process they created a short dance piece that was inspired by and performed to words instead of music. The final words they used were: Confidence, Freedom, Boycott, Equality, Brutality, "I have a dream...", Express Yourself, and Wisdom.
The Videography team was in charge of choosing locations to film the dancers performing their piece. Each of the three videographers took a turn directing a scene, having to consider lighting, timing, shooting from different angles, and directing the performers to the right places. They filmed the scenes using the iPads from their classroom.
The Music Production team worked on iPads with Garageband to explore all of the different sounds and instruments used to make a hip-hop style beat/song. Each student worked individually to make short songs or select music elements that they liked, which were then compiled into one song that was inspired by their choices. The music team also experimented with recording live music to incorporate into their song - asking their African dance teacher to play drums for them to record - however they decided that they didn't like the final sound that they captured and didn't use the recording in their song (it's all about the process and trying new methods!).
The Visual Arts/Advertising team was asked to create a class production name and logo (which was then approved by the class--seen above). They also created posters to advertise the showing of the video at an art gallery style opening at their school on March 10th. On their posters they chose to use cut out images of famous Civil Rights leaders alongside images of the different teams working on the production.
The Dance/Choreography team was asked to pick out words from the Civil Rights Movement word bank and create a dance move for each word. They then put the movements together into one sequence that could be repeated over and over. Through this process they created a short dance piece that was inspired by and performed to words instead of music. The final words they used were: Confidence, Freedom, Boycott, Equality, Brutality, "I have a dream...", Express Yourself, and Wisdom.
The Videography team was in charge of choosing locations to film the dancers performing their piece. Each of the three videographers took a turn directing a scene, having to consider lighting, timing, shooting from different angles, and directing the performers to the right places. They filmed the scenes using the iPads from their classroom.
The Music Production team worked on iPads with Garageband to explore all of the different sounds and instruments used to make a hip-hop style beat/song. Each student worked individually to make short songs or select music elements that they liked, which were then compiled into one song that was inspired by their choices. The music team also experimented with recording live music to incorporate into their song - asking their African dance teacher to play drums for them to record - however they decided that they didn't like the final sound that they captured and didn't use the recording in their song (it's all about the process and trying new methods!).
The Visual Arts/Advertising team was asked to create a class production name and logo (which was then approved by the class--seen above). They also created posters to advertise the showing of the video at an art gallery style opening at their school on March 10th. On their posters they chose to use cut out images of famous Civil Rights leaders alongside images of the different teams working on the production.