If the title didn’t draw you into this post, hopefully this will. We all have fears. Some, greater than others. Imagine your teacher telling you that you will be walking into a room full of your fear. As you approach the building, shivers crawl down your spine as you brace yourself to step into the room…

Yeah you guessed it, my greatest fear is kids. Some people are great with them! That definitely isn’t me. In short, screaming kids just terrify me. Well, looks like I’m gonna have to face that fear as that’s one of the main points of this project.

Like most grade nine students, we came to the point in the year where we had to learn and uncover the topic of World War One. As gruesome and bloody as this topic may be, we were told that our final project actually would be presented to a younger audience: the “lovely, quiet and wonderful” grade six and seven students from CoveCliff Elementary.

Since this year is focused on video making, we would each be given a topic based off of World War One and present what we learned in the form of a video. The video could be any form we wanted from animations, to documentaries, Stop Motions and more. I chose to challenge myself with an animation. Due to my lack of drawing utensils and patience, this format of video isn’t one I do often.

Great. Just great. Not only do I have to stress about another video, but, I also have to present it to a group of over energetic kids. Great.

I’ve always had a particular interest in what women and girls did in the past. I mean, come on, men got to do all the fun stuff. They’re the ones seen in the trenches, as soldiers, officers and more. Women? Well, Disney explains their role pretty well in the majority of their princess movies. Girls were always seen as the pretty damsel in distress. Weak, dependant not as important as men. While men were seen as higher up, women played a huge role during the First World War.

We all know men were the ones who fought on the actual battlefield, but at the same time, women were fighting another battle. A battle for equality. To this day, men are treated better, however, what the women did during the war changed their lives and the lives of other women forever.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJjcY9rp_CE

Because our audience was the grade sixes and sevens, it was important to keep them in mind while creating the video. This meant that we couldn’t add anything that might traumatize the children or any words they might not understand. I felt that an animation would be most appropriate for the age group as it allows me to show visuals that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise such as explosions, etc.

Like all videos, the process starts with an idea than we moved to a screenplay and finally a storyboard. Honestly, if I were to go back and change something, I would’ve spent more time on the storyboard and really plan out where I was going to film myself at the desk because, I soon realized that my house was unfit to film. Luckily though, I was able to film in the classroom which made for a surprisingly good film set!

Finally, the hardest part of the project arrived. The day we would have to share our work to the kids of Cove Cliff. At first, it took all my might not to run or scream or hide, but after seeing some familiar faces, I calmed down a bit. I’m happy to report that the kids I shared my video with were all engaged and showed a good understanding of the topic!

So, at the end of the day, producing a video I’m proud of and conquering my fear? A pretty great way to end grade nine humanities I’d say!