Tag: Literacy

An Interview with Luiz Stockler – filmmaker, storyteller, people-watcher

LiteracyPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on An Interview with Luiz Stockler – filmmaker, storyteller, people-watcher

Luiz Lafayette Stockler is a 25 year old award winning director and animator. I recently discovered his film Vovô on Vimeo and was immediately struck by the powerful simplicity and the beautiful way the story is told. I have been lucky enough to find some incredible work on Vimeo just recently and Luiz’s film is most certainly in that category.

 

Vovô from Luiz Lafayette Stockler on Vimeo.

 

I managed to track Luiz down and he was kind enough to answer some questions about his film and his own process of storytelling.

You say in your Twitter profile “North Wales via Brazil” – what’s the story there?

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to a Brazilian father and a Welsh mother. My parents worked with horses and were professional showjumpers who competed at the highest level in south america. when I was 8 years old, my dad was offered a job in Scotland riding horses for a breeder, so we moved to the UK. my dad has since moved back to Brazil.

You are soon to start at the London Royal College of Art – what are you studying?

I am starting an MA in Animation at the Royal college of Art, it’s quite a prestigious school in the animation world so I was ecstatic when I was offered a place!

Your short animated film Vovô has caused quite a stir online, what do you enjoy most about your film?

I think the one thing I enjoy the most out of my film is that its such a personal story to me, but also something that I think anyone can relate to in some way or another. It has a universal theme that makes it accessible to people.

Vovô has quite a sad story to it, is the film something you have created out of personal experiences or is it purely fiction?

Vovô is the Portuguese word for grandfather. The film is about my childhood memories of my grandfather when I was growing up in Brazil, up until his untimely death during a summer holiday I spent back in Rio visiting my family when I was 19, I havent been back since.

What sort of time did you dedicate to the Vovô project? Does it take a long time to create something so polished?

It was made during my third year of my BA in Animation at the University of Wales, Newport. I had the whole year to work on it from development/pre-production/production/post production to finished piece….the script was the easiest part, I wrote that in a day and took about 5 drafts to get it right, I got a lot of help and feedback from my friends which helped a lot…the rest of the film went through so many changes and doubt/insecurities that I almost gave up and considered re-doing the year. Because of its personal element it became very easy to lose sight of what I was trying to make. I think as a filmmaker/artist/musician/writer etc… you can become quite precious of your idea and it can be quite hard to stand back and take a look at it with an open mind. I had all these storyboards and animatics that no longer made sense to me so in the end I had to become a bit ruthless with it all and I just let spontaneity take over and freestyled most of the film, animating it in six weeks. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone though as I hardly slept, but I thrived on the pressure. luckily most of the scenes were fairly simple to animate, otherwise it would have taken a lot longer. the best thing I had throughout though was my friends/fellow classmates, without their help I dont think I would have made this film the way I did. I cant thank them enough.

 

Showreel 2010 from Luiz Lafayette Stockler on Vimeo.

 

How do you maintain a sense of self and originality when there is so much incredible work published these days? What advice would you give a young artist or illustrator about finding their own way of doing things?

I think I’ve always struggled with drawing things ‘well’, I’m terrible at proportion/perspective etc…so the only way I could put to paper what is in my mind is to simplify it by about a 100 times, I always say that my work is a bad version of what I saw in my head. I think the most important/useful advice I ever got given was to play to your strengths, I kept things simple because thats the way I’ve always worked in my sketchbooks. You can get excited by a new technique or visual style or even a software plug-in that you end up getting carried away with it and lose perspective on what you’re trying to do, you also lose that raw connection you had with your work in the first place. Keep it simple, play to your strengths and do what excites you.

Do you consciously strike a balance between the depth of the story and the way it is told?

When I was coming up with visuals, I was told by a friend that if something is being said then we dont need to see it everytime, it’s like we’re being told something twice. With this in mind, I tried to think less literal and more metaphorically and symbolically about what was on screen, I thought about how the viewer could learn so much more about the characters without being told, but rather shown. I also think it has something to do with songwriting, I’ve written songs since i was young so I’ve always been used to telling stories in a stripped down/brief way. The script of the film ended up being a progression of my songwriting.

Your film is centred around the relationships of two people and very focused on particular idiosyncrasies, what do you like about people-watching?

I’ve always been interested in people watching. I like how you can tell a lot about a person before you’ve even had a conversation with them. The way they walk, the way they dress, cross their legs, hold a cigarette etc… we show a lot of who we are using just body language and I think I have been good at mimicking that in people from a young age, I was always doing impressions of friends and family, copying their gestures and behavioural nuances – something which has definitely helped me when it comes to animating characters.

Do you have any projects you are currently working on that you can share?

I’m currently just saving money for my big move to London and the Royal College of Art. apart from that, I’m constantly doing illustrations and working on ideas for films, which you can see on my blog at http://luizstockler.wordpress.com

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Many thanks to Luiz for sharing his thoughts and taking the time to answer some questions. Working with children in school around the issues in Luiz’s film can be difficult and as teachers we are often a central part of the support that can be provided to children who are dealing with personal loss. Perhaps this film could be used to help an open discussion around these sensitive and difficult times.

Of course at the heart of the film is the story and such a narrative could be explored more widely in terms of the way it is told, un-picking the brevity of narration and how it is paired with visual metaphor and symbols as Luiz explained.

I hope you enjoyed the film and hearing from Luiz himself, perhaps you will see a place for it in your own curriculum or to support the work you are doing with children. I am sure you will join me in wishing Luiz every success when he joins the Royal College this September and in his future work.

Are Online Behaviours Affecting Reading Skills?

Curriculum, Google, LiteracyPublished onUpdated on4 Comments on Are Online Behaviours Affecting Reading Skills?

In my final weeks of school our class had our usual Tuesday afternoon guided reading session, where we get the opportunity to work on some reading text with a small group of children. One particular comment from a pupil has stuck in my mind, so I thought I would share some of my reflections with you.

Whilst exploring a text we came across a particular word that became the focus of our attention. Although the group had no problem reading and pronouncing it they didn’t know what it meant. I aimed to set the children off exploring the definition from the information we could acquire from the sentence and the text overall, we may have even cracked open a dictionary or two…

“We could just Google it!”

As you can see the comment from one of the group stuck in my mind for a number of reasons. Firstly it indicated to me how much web searching had become part of how these 9 and 10 years olds process the information they see in the world. The concept of search applies to so much around them and the need for a better understanding of how we instruct and guide our classes to filter what they find, has never been so more acute.

Equally the appropriateness of using different tools is a key part of navigating the learning landscape, indeed one of the most difficult aspects is helping young learners make better decisions regarding the tools they use.

Of course I was not surprised by this comment after all many of the children have Kindles and the latest model has a full Oxford English Dictionary available on it. The children simply have to move a cursor and the definition will be displayed on the screen at the bottom. I remember writing lists of words I didn’t know from texts during my English degree and finding out later.

The immediacy of information and indeed the expectation for it is all to clear. We expect results, definitions and answers faster nowadays and so do the children in our classes. The question is what are we doing about it?


Googledictionaryplugin

Within the browser too you have access to dictionary tools to help when you are reading online. I use Google Chrome’s extension which allows you to double-click a word and a little pop-up dictionary definition appears. I use this loads – no more written lists of vocabulary for me!

Another reason the comment struck a chord with me is how the decision to Google a word comes ahead of trying to establsish meaning from reading skills, such as reading into the context and exploring the sentence further. Of course, this one comment should not be over played. However in my opinion it does hint at the ways children are thinking about processing the information, from reading material or otherwise, we work with everyday.

I am of course an advocate for the appropriate use of technology, where it can transform learning and add value – and in this instance it is not a “this skill replaces that skill” scenario but an opportunity to reflect on the ways we can enhance what we do and take advantage of ideas children have.

To answer my own question in the title, yes they are in a broadly positive way, but especially children in primary school or elementary need support and guidance to help them filter the information they search. They need contextualised examples and ongoing references to the ways we search and use information tools – I think this is a pivotal aspect of teaching and can only become more acute in the coming years.

 

Paraphernalia – a short animation to use in Literacy

Curriculum, LiteracyPublished onUpdated on10 Comments on Paraphernalia – a short animation to use in Literacy

The other night I had a little whirlwind session exploring content on Vimeo and discovered some fantastic pieces of work, including this lovely short animation called Paraphernalia. It is a 3rd year film made by Sabrina Cotungo who is studying at The California Institute of the Arts – however her film was made at Gobelins, l’école de l’image in Paris.

Sabrina Cotungo describes her film as

The story of an anemic little recluse of a girl who makes a friend at the expense of her ceiling.

 

Paraphernalia from Sabrina Cotugno on Vimeo.

What strikes me about the little story is the openings it presents for a class to explore in terms of their narrative literacy unit, the questions that could be asked about the plot and the characters.

  • Why is she all alone?
  • Where are her family?
  • Where was the gentleman heading?
  • Why did he crash?
  • Why had he invented such a wonderful flying machine?

Also a class could spend time working on the dialogue that takes place between our characters. It is conveniently silent and we might encourage our pupils to explain the emotions we see on their faces, to play these scenes out in some drama and then to perhaps develop the written dialogue.

What do you like about the film and how do you see it being used with your classes?

Oil’d – How Could Our Pupils Make an Animation Like This?

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I’m fascinated by the representation of data using infographics. I like their bold visual approach and how the style and composition signals the content it is communicating.

Chris Harmon a designer and animator from the Greater New York City area created this beautiful and thought provoking animation called Oil’d. It explores how dependent we are to oil and how much was lost into the ocean from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Oil’d from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Just from the presentation of information about the oil spill we could go in many different directions with our classes.

  • Exploring he sources of information used
  • Verifying the accuracy of the data included in the film

However if we unpick the animation layer by layer we get a much better idea of the great skill with which Chris used to complete it. Wouldn’t it be great to have Chris in front of a class of students explaining how he went about creating the animation, the stages of planning and execution.

For me there are many elements and skills that would on their own make excellent projects for children to explore and be engaged in:

Data
The maths involved in comparing and cross referencing the data, and what so many good infographic do the data-metaphor, juxtaposing information against something we find easy to refer to. For example the number of plastic bottles inside the Empire State Building, which we know is big!

Authentic information and research
Finding accurate information and data would be another important skill that would challenge a student to create something equally authentic and meaningful. We have the tools with which to find huge amounts of information and data but we need to know how to filter it. I don’t think teaching children how to search is enough, that is the first step, it is how we then process that information that needs time to be demonstrated and improved.

Persuasion
With my literacy hat on this animation pushes us to consider the impact of oil on our lives and has a strong persuasive message. The art of persuasive writing and in this case the careful scripting would be great to develop in this sort of medium, perhaps about a local issue.

Animation
The artwork and animation are obviously professional, but there is much to explore about the use of colour to convey meaning and an overall message. The colour schemes remind me of the Breathing Earth which also depicts an environmental message. It would be good for children to explore symbols and how we might convey a message in a visual way – a comparison type task would fit well here.

I think this animation is a great example of the sort of cross-curricular, multi-skill outcome that should be challenging our pupils in our schools. Making an animated infographic film about a local issue would cover so much. Furthermore if you had the opportunity to involve expertise, like Chris Harmon’s, it would provide that spark that would spur such a project onwards even further.

Don’t Just Tweet, Create Something!

Google Docs, Interesting Ways, Networks, TwitterPublished onUpdated on2 Comments on Don’t Just Tweet, Create Something!

I have been fortunate enough to see many resources created by the thousands of willing educators using Twitter. However in my opinion there is a strong case for using hashtagging more systematically, so that we better organise and structure the resources, ideas and thoughts we all have.

A Twitter hashtag uses this symbol # folllowed by a unique word, abbreviation, acronym or phrase that defines the subject or theme of the tweet it is included in. It is a great way to filter and organise tweets so they are easily found by your network.

Simply put, the more we use tagging the easier it will be to find the most relevant tweets that share resources and advice etc.

One example of a resource created using hashtags is the sentence starter tweets I began under the tags #sentstartdecisions and #sentstarttree. I wanted to gather together ideas for sentence starters that can be used in the classroom. Each tag is specific to a topic or theme that gives other teachers a little bit of a focus for their contributions.

They have proven really successful, with nearly 100 contributions for just these two tags – a great resource for the classroom, to inspire planning and to engage young writers. However the tweets are not that useful as they are – indeed there is also the retweets that use the hashtag, so it is mildly littered with less than useful tweets. I have taken all of the sentence starters and created separate Google Docs presentations with them, a sentence starter per slide. I suspect that in this form it is more useful and accessible to teachers and students.

(Please feel free to edit the above presentations and add your ideas)

In fact by using the Twitter hashtag I have in effect added a step in the process. The Interesting Ways series is so successful because when users contribute they archive and extend a version of the presentation itself – there is no middle man, well there is me and I often add ideas on behalf of people, but there is no middle step, you add your idea and that’s it. Using a hashtag and then having to generate a presentation from that tag before it’s Twitter lifespan runs out is time consuming. (Tweets will eventually not appear in a hashtag search)

On the other hand, adding a sentence starter idea via Twitter is less clicks for a teacher using Twitter – they don’t have to go to Google Docs, add the slide etc. So it is easier to do it there and then and add the hashtag. In fact some school children were contributing with their teachers this week.

I believe it is important we encourage the alacritous members of our network in some form of creation. Whichever way you gather the ideas engage them in creation as much as conversation.