Teaching Video Production to Elementary School Students

If you’re interested in teaching video production to children, you’ll enjoy watching this 8:50 long video.  It shows a class of elementary school students creating original videos in a video production class I taught during a two-week summer academic camp.

How To Teach Elementary School Students to Make Video

Summer school camps are meant to be fun.  Educational, but still fun, as all education should be, imho.  A summer school camp isn’t for kids to catch up with the basics.  It’s for academically oriented kids to have out of the box experiences they’ll enjoy.

Back when I taught in a wealthy school district in Middle Tennessee, I was asked to be the teacher for Lights, Camera, Action, one of about 60 classes offered at a summer school camp for elementary students throughout the district.  The camp offered a wide range of fascinating subjects not normally found in standard school programs.  Everything from cooking to poetry to astronomy.

These are the sort of opportunities I was always seeking for my own child.  I believe they can be so enriching, so I wanted to give my students the Hollywood experience of a lifetime.

What would I have them do?  I shot for the moon and in hindsight I am blown away by how much these youngsters accomplished in 15 hours.  Let the creativity fly!

In just one week, each of my classes created an original video, 5-10 minutes long, from scratch with original characters, plots, settings, and costumes.  Some were extremely elaborate for the conditions, all were creative and fun.   The kids worked hard, but definitely enjoyed it all.  What more can a teacher hope for in a brief summer school class?

I was able to treat each session and class exactly the same, which was fortunate for my lesson planning.   Each class was three hours long, which is an excellent length for an intensive subject like video.  There were two different classes per day, so I had two sets of students.

The school had a low-tech, low-budget studio built from outdated home equipment, but it all worked.  The kids felt comfortable with it.  I thought it was perfect for an elementary school environment.  IMHO, kids that age simply don’t need top-notch equipment.  Used is fine.  Simpler equipment is actually preferred at this age since it lets you concentrate on the fun or production and not tedious technicalities.

There were three cameras, a primitive switcher, and all the monitors, microphones, cables and accessories needed for a studio production experience.  We relied on standard classroom overhead lighting.

Studio production is much easier for kids to grasp than one-camera technique.  So as a teacher, the type of lesson plan I needed was for a basic, in-studio production that could be recorded as-live using spontaneous editing.   This includes newscasts, talk shows, and simple skits with no more than two locations.

We worked all week to produce a show to be performed and recorded as-live on Friday.  Only one class didn’t get a full show recorded, but they got most of it. In hindsight, that particular class had designed a show that was really too complicated to manage in an as-live manner.  So I take the blame as teacher.  I should have steered them to keep it a little shorter and easier.

On The First Day of Camp

The very first thing we did after basic introductions on the first day, was fire up the cameras and take turns doing one of five jobs:

• Camera operator
• Director
• Audio control tech
• On-camera talent, either interviewer or interviewee.

There were about 12 kids in the class, so rotating everybody through every single job took the entire first period.

I gave brief demonstrations/explanations of each job.  I let them fiddle with the equipment to get a feel for it all.   No student sat in a desk for any of this.

I told students the person being interviewed did not have to be themselves. I allowed them to be their favorite celebrity or sports figure, Superman or Alice in Wonderland if they so wished.  During my explanation of the interviewer job, we discussed interviewing people and how to come up with questions.  As a class, we came up with several basic, open-ended questions that would work for any interviewee.  IOW, a basic quickie lesson in who, what, why, when, where, and how.  I let each individual interviewer adapt live on the air!  Well, live on tape anyway.

Without a studio setup, no  matter how low-budget, it would be difficult to have the kids producing real any TV on the very first day.

Classroom instruction for one-camera technique and for studio technique are quite different since the methods are completely different.  Fortunately, any show format is adaptable to either, so is any lesson plan.

On Day 2

Actually, as brief as this camp was, I could have had the class do much the same thing every day.  Many schools have classes like this do simple newscast shows reading announcements. I think that’s boring.  I wanted them to produce a real show, original, unique, creative.

The second day of class started out by discussing the styles of shows we could produce.  I let them brainstorm and  make decisions. What style of show did they want to tackle?  A work of journalism or a work of art?  Fact or fiction?  Talk show, game show, drama, comedy?

I had a list pre-prepared so we could keep it reasonable and practical, yet still offer them the best opportunity for creativity.

In my experience as a teacher, I have found it best to apply the “layers of an onion” analogy with project creation.  One idea builds on another idea, which then leads to another.

Video production is a series of steps, as most tasks are.  So the first step is to pick the kind of show, style, and objective.  Go from there.  Come up with characters.  Are they good guys or bad guys?  I always reminded them of the importance of a motivation for characters.  Personally, I always have a fabulous time leading students on a discussion of character traits.

I explain the concept of character-driven storytelling, creating a diverse bunch of characters who clash by their very natures.  You know, mix a tough guy with a nerd with a compassionate soul and what the sparks fly.

Character driven storytelling makes it easy to build a plot.  What does this group of whacky characters do?    Why do they do these things?  What happens when they do these things?

OMG, suddenly, you’ve got a story.

I led these lively discussions with input from every member of the class.  Decisions were made.  Democracy ruled.

Day 3 to 5

Once you start adding layers to your metaphorical onion of a story, watch your length and remember these things tend to look shorter on paper than they will on video.  It’s easy to get carried away and dream of what would be a two-hour movie.  Your main job at this point is to keep them on a practical road without stifling creativity.  One of my classes used a laundry basket as a ocean-going vessel, so clearly I didn’t exactly enforce a high level production value.  Creativity is always my guiding principle.

Once you have a passable script, the next step is to gather the elements you need and rehearse.  Costumes, sets, props.  Keep it simple.  Laundry baskets = ocean liners.

When formulating the script in discussions with the whole class, I am constantly asking questions of practicality.  If they want a sword fighting scene, do any of them own toy swords?  I’ve seen times where the genesis of a character is a kid’s favorite toy or Halloween costume.  Once the kids’ brains start rolling, sometimes there is no stop.

My plan was for this masterpiece film to be videotaped as-live on the final day of class.  With a 3-hour class, that left plenty of rehearsal time before rolling tape.  We were able to do multiple takes of each show.

None were perfect, but there was no time to edit, which of course is the basic definition of as-live.  That’s ok.  This is elementary school fun, after all, not a network TV show.  I try to just laugh when mistakes are made in a student video production, especially an as-live.  Even pros make mistakes as-live.

This onion-layering, story-building procedure I used in this summer camp is the same basic process I used with high school students too. Here is a post describing modifying this lesson for a project spanning the course of a semester, and how one such video ended up winning a national high school Emmy Award.

TEACHING VIDEO PRODUCTION IN SCHOOLS HAS ENORMOUS BENEFITS

Learning to make video is one of the best activities for kids that I know. Having taught both high school and elementary school students TV Production, I can say with certainty that participating in the process of video making builds children up in a wide variety of marvelous ways.

What kids gain from video making goes way beyond what one might think. It certainly goes beyond learning skills that can someday earn them a living, although that indeed is one of the benefits. This post is dedicated to the many people who write to me asking questions about school video production classes and how to teach video making to kids.

TEAMWORK

Video production is, by and large, a group activity. Nothing much gets done if the group can not act as a team! I doubt if anyone who has ever nurtured children would argue with the fact that learning cooperation and teamwork is an incredibly important skill to develop. The younger the better!

Parents often turn to sports for giving teamwork experience to children. I am a big fan of that of course, but video production is another great avenue most folks never consider. Some of my most successful student video producers were kids who were not athletic, so video was one of the few ways for them to succeed on a team!

GOAL SETTING

When making video, the goal of course is to complete a finished show. When I took the kids through the process of deciding what to create, we began with the end goal in mind. What kind of show did they want to make? Funny? Dramatic? Realistic? Fantasty? Decide that first.

Since video making is a process, there are lots of little goals along the way. So when I teach video production, I make sure everyone realizes what small goal we are working on at the moment. Reaching all your small goals one after the other leads to reaching your large goal in the end.

So teaching video production gives kids valuable life experiences like goal setting.

CREATIVE OUTLET & SELF-EXPRESSION

The creative possibilities with video are endless! Kids always blossom when given creative ways to express themselves. With video making, they have the opportunity to get creative on so many levels: writing, acting, lighting, costumes, the list is long.

If they don’t already feel creative, you can show them the process I outline for video storytelling and their creativity confidence will grow by leaps and bounds. More of the process is outlined in this post about my experiences with teaching high school video production .

TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE AND KNOW-HOW

We live in a tech-oriented world. Without a feeling of comfort and familiarity around technology, a person is sunk! Video equipment is a relatively easy way to become familiar with the gadgets and gizmos they will encounter in all phases of life. I do suggest you start slowly though. I personally do not think it’s a good idea to give a 3rd grader a professional video camera or an audio mixer with 125 inputs. Let them learn the basics with SIMPLE equipment; that is technical enough for beginners. You do not want to create a feeling of overwhelming expectation. That can be counterproductive. They will get there eventually, you just need a little patience.

COMPUTER SKILLS

With video editing, kids will learn all kinds of computer skills, many of which can easily be translated into other computer programs. Editing was not something I did with my elementary students, but my high school students sure loved it.

READING AND WRITING SKILLS: Watching TV often gets blamed for lowering literacy. Well, MAKING television instead of just watching does the opposite! As a mommy, I was a HUGE fan of reading over television. As a high school video production teacher, I thought my class probably did more to teach kids reading and writing than just about any other except language classes. Virtually all videos require a script to be written. Often, those scripts need to be read aloud on camera. Reading and writing are integral parts of the process of creating video. So teaching video production is a FUN way of getting kids interested in reading and writing.

FACT-FINDING & RESEARCH SKILLS:

One of the easiest formats of TV show for kids to produce is a “newscast.” Lots of schools have students read the daily announcements for content. That’s easy, but I always felt like we should do better. I was always on the lookout for articles I thought they’d find interesting or amusing. But I didn’t spoon feed them! I had them research online stories then rewrite them into concise news copy. It was a little bit like writing mini term papers. Some in-depth projects they did required multiple sources.

PEOPLE SKILLS AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Not only are people skills a large part of the teamwork involved with making video, but people skills also come into play with any video that requires interviewing people or videotaping outside of the classroom. Interviewing was a staple of all my classes. We interviewed each other in introductory lessons. Everybody got a chance to be both the interviewer and the interviewee.

We did some with ourselves as real people. I also let them come up with people they’d like to be and then do the interview pretending they were those people. That was fun! For advanced students, we often had guests come in or a crew would be sent out. This required advanced planning, telephoning, and scheduling.

Then it was necessary for the students to instruct the people on what needed to be done and explain how they are going to go about it. To use a Hollywood term, they were directing! So teaching video production provides great experience to gain leadership skills.

ARTISTIC SKILLS

Many videos require sets to be designed and built, costumes to be designed and made, and artwork or logos to be designed and made. Lighting, writing, and characterization also require artistic skills.

Teaching video production is a fun way for kids to get artistic and explore different ways to create something out of nothing. You’ll see in the video how we used plastic crates doomed for the trash as boats!

POISE IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

As an adult professional, I believe there are few skills as beneficial as poise. Even if one never gets on stage in front of an audience, what about all the job interviews and other instances where it pays to have poise? Teaching video production is a great way for them to gain poise and become confident presenting themselves.

Interacting with confidence and style helps no matter what field you’re in. Being on-camera develops these skills probably better than anything. Not that you can assume your little stars won’t ever be criticized. That happens! As teacher, I helped them deal with it. I helped them realize that they could NEVER satisfy everybody, nor could they ever be perfect. IMHO, learning those simple lessons is a huge leap in maturing into an adult. So teaching video production includes those kind of valuable life lessons as well.

BENEFITS OF TEACHING VIDEO PRODUCTION ARE INCREDIBLE

So many of my students gained remarkably by learning to make videos. It was very gratifying to watch them mature, gain confidence and grow. Some students went from being shy, insecure nobodies to becoming studs on campus because their videos were so popular!

Another aspect I loved about teaching video production was that many of these students were not successful with regular school work, but they shone bright as gold in my class!

When you take a kid who has been labeled “special needs” by the system (which translates into the horribly insulting “retarded” to other students) it was was nothing short of a miracle to see them thrive as video makers. And thrive they did. I saw multiple cases of total renewal. Kids who absolutely HATED school loved video class. It even kept a few from dropping out. Video Production was a class loved by virtually everybody. It appealed to kids of all types.

Now occasionally, I would hear an adult say something cynical like: “Teaching video production in school? Too much TV is the problem! Isn’t school supposed to keep them away from TV?” Although I understood what they meant, I had to explain that MAKING TV and WATCHING TV are two separate things! Making TV is one of the most beneficial tasks you can teach a kid IMHO! Not just for the reasons outlined above. I also taught them to be critical evaluators of everything they saw. If they are going to be bombarded by TV, isn’t it a good idea to make sure they aren’t bamboozled by it?

PERSPECTIVE ON THE WORLD AROUND THEM

One of my favorite assignments was to show them old videos like Martha Rae or Rosemary Clooney singing on The Red Skelton Show. Then I’d have them do a compare and contrast with any modern day singer. It didn’t take a genius to realize the old gals wore more clothes and actually knew how to sing! How’s that for a history lesson?

I actually had them watch lots of old shows. I thought this gave them a perspective on the world and showed them life could be very different from what they personally experienced.

In summary, I think teaching video production has enormous benefits, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity. So teaach your kids video production today!

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.

Lorraine Grula

FOOD FOR THOUGHT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

• Name 3 benefits of elementary school children learning to make original videos.
• What skills do students gain from learning to produce professional quality videos?
• How does experience producing video help students gain leadership skills?