Thing 25: Green Screen Fun

So much fun with green screen!  I made this video with my group of 7 first graders that I have a few times per week for enrichment.  We read Magic Tree House; Dolphins at Daybreak and then did research on coral reef animals.  I had a group research sea stars and a group research sea horses.  As a final project each student colored their animal, chose a favorite fact to read and then we practiced, practiced, and did more practicing!  I have a new appreciation for our music teachers and any classroom teacher that has their class perform :)

I first learned about green screen at a tech camp this summer.  My friend and I made a short video of Mr. Bill, his dog Spot, and Mr. Hand - people of a certain age will recognize these SNL characters.  This explains Mr. Hand in the video above :)

  The PD presenters were very generous - we all left with a sheet pizza box painted lime green.  Well, it sat in my library all fall until I saw this topic in cool tools and thought it would be a great final project for this group.  I just wish I would have read all the resources on Cool Tools before I started and not after!  But reading them this evening has proven to be beneficial because I can reflect on what went well, and what I will change for the next project.

Challenges

I had students color cutouts of their animals and forgot to tell them not to use green, or even yellow that is close to green.  One student chose to redo his, and the other student loved that the inside was invisible and used it anyway

Not all parents gave permission to have their children's faces on a public video, so I modified the project to only include their voices.

I didn't anticipate how many practices it would take for students to successfully read their fact, move their animal, and wait quietly while others performed.  Also, it took me many attempts to find a location for the green screen, the iPad, and the students that worked well for me to film it without having the carpeting or the library sneaking into the picture because I moved the iPad.

I needed assistants to hold the cue cards for students to read.  Next time I will have them memorize their lines.

Green pipe cleaners worked perfectly for the students to hold the animals - the goal was to have it look like the animals were swimming.

Laminating the animals and putting them on card stock made it much easier for the students to manage them, and helped them remain intact during all the practices.

I think I will try book reviews with my older students for my next project.  I loved the idea of putting the student's pictures on book covers!