This past month, we embarked on a project called Frankenstuffies. This project was part of both humanities and science, and we learned about ecosystems, adaptations, and geography. The way we learned about those topics was to write a story and then adapt it into a screenplay and finally, create a film showcasing what we had learned.
To start, we had to pick a geographical region of Canada to set our story in, and then choose an animal that was native to that region. My region was the Western Cordilleran region. The animal that I chose to base my story around was a black bear. The first step of starting the actual content of the project, however, was to write a series of diary entries from the perspective of our animal. This may seem simple, but in fact, it was quite difficult because we also had to include in our story a disruption in one of the matter cycles (I chose the water cycle), an immediate issue or danger to your creature because of the disruption (I had my bear’s valley flood), and then your animal had to adapt to this in a unique way (mine grew webbed feet and formed gills). That’s where the name of the project comes from!
Next, we had to turn these diary entries into a full script to film with camera shots, dialogue, and stage directions. This was one of the more difficult parts of our project, seeing as we needed to change the perspective of these diary entries into a full-fledged movie script, but I was able to adapt it a bit. The next stage after the script writing was to make a storyboard showing the different angles and shots we would need for our video. That part was simple for me because I had already included most of that information in my script, so I completed it pretty fast.
Finally, the filming. We took stuffed animals and then used a green screen to digitally add backgrounds to our videos, and then we filmed it. I had to do quite a few revisions, and this is what I ended up with!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EHn2dJ8mSk
I am quite pleased with how my video turned out and I hope you enjoyed it!