Transcript
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GAIL BLOCK:
My advice for teachers and young people when they're trying to translate an abstract academic historical idea into something that you can film is to think very hard about what in the real world you can point that camera at. So, can you reconstruct a historical event? Or can you interview someone?
If you're going to interview someone, what questions would you like to ask them? Can you draw something on paper and create a little graphic sequence? Or are there any objects or buildings or places in your local area that really exemplify this idea?
A good idea for a three-minute film is actually quite simple. You don't want to cram a whole load of detail in there. I was always told you have to have something that you can write down on a post-it note. It also has to have a strong argument, a strong intellectual idea in the way that you would probably look for in an essay.
We are really interested in what the young people themselves have to say so it's not just, oh, we went out and we interviewed people to find out what they think. We would love to see a beginning, a middle, and an end. And at the end we would love to see a synthesis of what the young people themselves have decided about this matter.
When professionals make a film we have quite a long time to do it and that's not a luxury that your young people are ever going to have. So it's really important not to set too high expectations. They're not going to make a Hollywood movie. And actually that's not the point. The point is for them to be able to express their ideas, so they should be thinking about what they really most want to say.
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