Letter to Scrapstore

Today we wrote a combined email to the Scrapstore explaining our current ideas before we actually commence with creating the advert. This is the email.

To John

This is the Creative and Media group updating you on our progress with the project.

We've all now finished the planning stages and are ready to move on.

Jack
My part of the project is to create a film to bridge the other group member's films. I am sticking with my idea of a Rube Goldberg machine, but I am taking your advice and creating and filming it here at college instead of the school. This is due to the complexity of the task and I also thought it could show how college students like us can use the Scrap, not just children. I have drawn up several sketches for ideas and experimented with the limited materials I have to hand at college, but a final idea will come once I collect some more from the Scrapstore. I will design the machine to slow down or stop at various stages where it can introduce the other films.

Oliver

I have finished my planning stage and I am now ready to commence with the next level of my project. After our last discussion when we all decided against working on one big project I decided to go ahead with a single activity with a group of schoolchildren. My first idea was to work with one big sculpture that all the children would contribute towards, maybe with their own scrap along with Scrapstore's scrap. After going through the initial planning stages I thought that maybe working on a large scale 3D sculpture would be too time consuming and the children would lose intrest quickly. I decided to scale it down by getting the children to make loads of small sculptures but again though it would be too time consuming and the children would quickly get bored. I decided to go into two dimensions and appeal to the kids more on their level. I decided to make outlines of things that would interest them, thus holding their attention keeping them occupied. After drawing up test outlines, I thought that the different shapes would possibly confuse them and decided to stick to one simple, recognisable shape that most ten year-olds would know. So I have created pseudo-Lego figures that will be drawn onto cardboard or similar that the children can place scrap around, create clothes for them and generally mess around with. I will then combine all these small (around A5) drawings to create one big picture using a colour coding system (picture still to be decided upon).

Kate

I have decided to do an individual project filming children playing with scrap and use it to create a promotional film appealing to companies to persuade them to donate scrap. I have found two children to help me with this and I am going to set up scenes in which they are exploring different environments such as the jungle and outer space. I will them use an animated background to show their imagination and show how playing with scrap has helped them use their imagination. I am interested in seeing children playing with a playpod at a school and think it could be good inspiration for ideas, but I think it would be more effective and easier to film children I know and can instruct so the film follows a plan. The film will be narrated by one of the children in the form of a poem.

Lauren

my proposal is to use steiner school methods to teach the children through play, so they don't think of it as a lesson but still learn from it. I have come up with a rough lesson plan for the children which is to build bridges out of the scrap and add weights to them so its kind of like a science lesson. I will show them how they can be joined differently what different shape bridges are stronger and how the amount of weight held is dependent on the strength of the bridge. i am going to film the whole thing and take photographs and make a short film to document my time at the school and to show how children can really make use of the scrap and to hopefully encourage companies to donate more scrap!