Be ready for an earful from the Claymation film, “Sea Creature Complaints.” The clownfish’s coral reef is dying, the sea turtle’s friends are choking on plastic, and the porpoise can’t tolerate sonar waves, even rallying to start a non-profit called “Porpoise with a Purpose.” This film was one of eight entries from Maui Huliau Foundation’s filmmaking students in Hawaii.
By Cassandra West
Educators across the country are turning to the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest (YFC) as a teaching tool for their students. YFC can teach valuable lessons in science, art, communications and enhance the overall learning experience, they say.
“This contest was a great way for [my students] to translate their research into something interesting for a lay audience,” Nancy Landrum, who teaches sustainable business management at Chicago’s Loyola University, said.
Landrum, a regular festival attendee, learned about the contest through its newsletter. From there, she saw an opportunity to bring it into her classroom. She first assigned her students a research paper on an environmental sustainability topic. Then she asked them to condense it into a brief format to communicate their topic to a general audience, she told OEFF.
She helped her students make the leap from paper to video by providing “a few web links on how to make a video with your smartphone.”
YFC received nearly two dozen entries from Loyola students this year.
“Educating Girls Can Mitigate Climate Change” was among the more than 20 Young Filmmakers Contest entries from Loyola University Professor Nancy Landrum’s sustainable business management class in Chicago.
“We've always had local teachers/schools who embraced the contest and incorporated it into their curriculum,” said Lisa Files, who co-leads the contest for One Earth Film Festival along with Sue Crothers. “Teachers such as Jenny Raia from Longfellow Elementary School in Oak Park, or Cory Kadlec at Roosevelt Middle School in River Forest, or Jonathan Moeller at DePaul College Prep In Chicago.”
But this year was different, Files explained.
“After we receive submissions, we ask entrants how they heard about the contest, and we started hearing the same teachers’ names over and over again, from places as far away as California and Massachusetts. People we had never even met or marketed to directly had incorporated the contest into their curriculum. They just found us on Google or Film Freeway or a scholarship website.”
Because the contest aligns so well with her school’s environmental filmmaking program Malia Cahill, a teacher in Hawaii, had students enter “all last year’s films,” she said.
“Our program teaches students environmental filmmaking by teaching them about various environmental topics and filmmaking skills,” said Cahill, executive director of the Maui Huliau Foundation. “We help them plan, film and edit and provide them with equipment. Then [they] come up with ideas and scripts and plan their teams’ filming and editing schedule.”
Cahill teaches environmental filmmaking and environmental education to grades 7-12 from various schools in Maui. “We help students investigate whichever environmental topic they choose. We also have another program that focuses on climate literacy and works with science teachers in various schools to incorporate hands-on climate change lessons and student-led projects.”
Total number of films that came into YFC this year from Maui Huliau Foundation: eight.
Five thousand miles to the east in Mashpee, Mass., middle school teacher Kristina Fraser learned about YFC through a Google search “for student film contests.” YFC met her criteria and curriculum requirements.
Fraser, who teaches media arts to seventh graders at Mashpee Middle School, likes to choose topics that are important and relevant, she said. “One reason I choose to create films on climate change is that it's all around us. Unfortunately, it is very easy for students to visually tell stories about things that are negatively impacting the environment.
“Fortunately,” she added, “we are seeing more and more solutions and ways to address and combat the problems. I think the world is slowly getting the message that climate change is important, and we should never stop teaching and learning about the importance of climate change and environmental sustainability. Our lives depend on it.”
Fraser assigned the project, complete with a rubric and deadlines. She provided “a lot of tech support” because “it's hard to learn everything from how to navigate the Finder on [an Apple] computer all the way to editing with professional editing software.”
She also facilitated the exporting and uploading of videos to the contest, getting paperwork filled out, signed and submitted, she said. “Students themselves provided peer feedback via a rough-cut critique and groups were required to make a minimum of three improvements to their videos based on the feedback they received.”
YFC received 12 submissions from Mashpee middle schoolers.
But Fraser didn’t stop there. She even “organized a screening at a local movie theater for students, families and supporters to celebrate the hard work and successes of these seventh graders.”
To see the jury’s winning selections from among 195 student films entered in the 2020 Young Filmmakers Contest, attend the premier screenings and awards event at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, March 7, at the Gene Siskel Center, in Chicago. More here.
“Whale Entanglement” was the theme for one of 12 submissions from Kristina Fraser’s Mashpee Middle School media arts class in Massachusetts.