Iveland kids film janitor's day

Skylar Stradmann (left) and Kaitlyn Magee

A team of Iveland Elementary kids, armed with camcorders, have been trailing janitor Harlon Williams. They're filming "A Day in the Life of Harlon the Great."

That's one of the tentative titles for a documentary film they're making. The film will be one of those entered in the 1st annual Show-Me a Movie contest.

Winners of the competition will have their films shown at the Midwest Educational Technology Conference in February.

(For more about the contest, you can go to www.csd.org/showmemovie/index.htm)

Eleven-year-old Skylar Stradtmann said the plot of the movie is to "show that our school wouldn't be as nice as it is without him."

Skylar is one of seven 5^th graders on the documentary film team. The Show-Me film competition is in its first year. But, the Iveland kids are familiar with making films.

They're all members of the ITV Team that makes one to five feature films each year.

Iveland's ITV program is in its 9^th year. Some of the kids on the Show-Me team refer to themselves as the "old guys" because they have been in the program for three years.

Eleven-year-old Aiden Simmons said the goal is to make one film each month. Those films are a collection of film clips about various activities at the school. The ITV crew then edits the clips into their 30-minute feature.

Ten-year-old Leah Carlson said the biggest problem with their Show-Me film project is editing down all their material. The Show-Me film can't be more than 2 minutes long.

Courtney Parker (left) and Aiden Simmons

Leah said, "Trimming the film is very difficult. We had one 4-minute film segment that we had to delete altogether."

The kids took turns following Harlon, filming him doing his various janitorial jobs.

Ten-year-old Kaitlyn Magee had the job of filming Harlon while he worked during the kids' lunch hour. Ten-year-old Rebekah Shoults filmed him helping with breakfasts.

But, the kids recreated the filming of Harlon opening the school at 6 a.m. None of them were up at that time. They had him go through the motions later in the day.

The school opening sequence is one part where they used some special effects. Showing him turning on lights on each of the three floors would take too long. So they filmed one light switching and repeated it quickly three times.

Another special effect was using fast-forward in editing. That did two things. First, it emphasized the many things Harlon does. Also it cut down the time used on film.

(left to right) Jaceta Butler, Rebekah Shoults and Leah Carlson

Eleven-year-old Jaceta Butler said the best thing she's learned was how to program special effects on the school's Avio editing machine. She said she'd had some prior filming experience.

"I helped an older cousin do her film project. I went around the neighborhood taking pictures of animals," she said.

Ten-year-old Courtney Parker said another special effect in their movie was the "picture in a picture." That involves a main emphasis on Harlon's work but there's a small picture of his supervisor cut into the upper left hand corner.

The supervisor's words are heard as the sound-track of the movie.

The kids had a real scare about part way through the editing. While using the Avio editing system to put together their latest ITV feature, someone clicked the wrong button.

Left to right: Kaitlyn Magee, Leah Carlson, Aiden Simmons, Courtney Parker, Jaceta Butler, Rebekah Shoults, and Skylar Stradtmann

Leah Carlson said, "We thought we had lost all the Harlon stuff." However, librarian Barb Morris retrieved the material before it was deleted from of the editing equipment.

The kids have put their Show-Me film together without a script. But, they have a storyboard that shows how they want the various parts to go together.

In fact, the quality of the storyboard is one of the judging categories. The winning films will be those that show the best 1. content, 2. creativity, 3. storyboarding, 4. videography, and 5. reflection.

The reflection sheet will give the students' assessment of what they were trying to accomplish with the film.

The Show-Me contest has three age classifications: Elementary, Grades 3-5; Middle, Grades 6-8, and High, Grades 9-12. Iveland is entered in the Elementary division. The deadline for the Show-Me contest is December 20.

Still to be decided in the Iveland project is how the film will open and how it will end.

But, Kaitlyn Magee summed up what most of the kids believe. She said, "Making movies is fun."