A practical guide for running a successful 30-hour (15-lesson) short film project in English with (pre-)intermediate students: planning, lessons, evaluation, deliverables, samples and experiences, plus ideas for other projects.

Prepare the Project (Short Film Project)

Select the classroom(s). The ideal project classroom has groups of tables. There is a projector and the teacher computer is fitted with MS Office and a video-editing program like Ulead VideoStudio. Each team has access to 1-2 computers with the same software during part (not all!) of the lessons.

In our most recent project we ended up using different locations
depending on the tasks at hand. We usually studied in the language lab, but for the manual phase at the beginning and when starting the manual scriptwriting, the library reference room was a good location. In the past we've also used seminar rooms for the presentations.

Arrange equipment. A digital video camera is required to record class presentations.

Not all teams may have access to their own video camera, so you may want to make the/a camera available on loan. We had 2 video cameras, but teams rarely borrowed them.

Allocate personnel. Besides the teacher(s) the course requires someone for computer / lab support during the lessons, and an film "expert" to lead the record / edit film workshop.

We asked our Academy's cameraman to lead the workshop. He did not speak English, so the workshop was in the students' native Thai language. However, the team introduction film they produced during the workshop was in English.

Prepare the handouts. Prepare and copy a course syllabus and  a set of progress reports for the students.

1 comment:

  1. I'm sure that all of naval cadets who made the videos have alot of knowledges about each story and know many technics to use the english. May I give you just a little bit comment? I think you should be trained more vowel sounds and accents to be close the original because when you grow up become naval officers, it's gonna be very good that Thai naval officers can speak english very well. How to speak well is you should always get to speak with people who use english.

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