St Mary’s Primary School
Acknowledgement of Country
Our school sits beside Lake Colac at the foothills of Red Rock and on the lush green land that has been cared for by generations of the Gulidjan people from the Maar Nation. Today we recognise their long history with this beautiful land we call home. We will always remember that our community learns, grows and plays upon traditional Gulidjan land and we pay our many respects to elders past, present and emerging.
Together we touch the ground of the land (touch ground)
We reach for the sky that covers the land (raise hands)
We touch our hearts to care for the land (touch our hearts)
EXPLORATION
Monday was a pupil-free day at the school, so we used the time for planning, a site visit to what will be the performance space and also a visit to Red Rock volcano, to orient Laura and Callum to the area from that point.
The hall will work well for the performance part of the final outcome. We have a clear idea now of where the work is going, and will soon be ramping up all our specialised artistic skills with the kids, asking them to choose what they's really like to focus on for the development period and performance.
St Andrew's Hall - Performance site
Barking Spider Creative peeps on Red Rock Volcano
Tuesday August 1st – Project Day 6
Session 1
Children’s acknowledgement of COUNTRY
Laura Physical Theatre
Shark Bait – kids say “Hoo Ha Ha” – Physical theatre and collaboration game.
Children took a chair each and moved to a random spot in the middle of the space and Laura introduced a new game. Laura is a Zombie. Her aim is to sit on a chair – there is one extra chair in the room. The Zombie’s aim is to take the extra chair – but moving slowly like a zombie. Children must move to stop the zombie sitting on the empty chair.
After 2 rounds we changed to hoops. Class was divided in half. Children were asked how they might improve the game and make it less chaotic. Teachers and BSC artists assisted children to communicate with each other. The children took it in turns to either play the game or watch and observe. After the game was played the observing children were asked what they noticed that improved the game : listening, watching, collaborating – much like sports they play.
CLICK HERE to see the Zombie game in time lapse.
Boom-chicka-boom game
Laura taught the kids choreography to this great, fun beat/rap-style song. The kids were learning coordination, dance, play and also scaling of energy, which we use in theatre. The kids had learned this in prep and so were familiar with the exercise, so once they were hooked, they had a great time.
Warm-up in preparation for performance
Sitting cross legged on the floor, Laura asked the children to feel their ribs, l=keep spines tall and breath in and out, to feel their breath. Laura asked asked the children about what they felt. The children noticed their shrinking and expansion of their breath, noticing their ribs, chest going up and down. Laura explained how your diaphragm works, how breath works. Laura then worked with the children on waking up facial muscles.
Laura then asked the children to a rapid pat down of their bodies from feet to head, to wake the body up.
Locative Tableaux creation
Leading into this exercise, this is what we have done:
Day 1 - Laura gave kids a location and they came up with a scene to add to the tableaux.
Day 2 - responding to the 3 square storyboards.
Day 3 – sound as stimulus, as individuals.
Day 4 - sound as stimulus as a group, then added a line of dialogue.
TODAY (Day 6) – Locative Tableaux, children come up with an enacted storyboard told in 3 tableaux, beginning middle and end.
This is designed to lead us into narrative story telling for performance and for storyboarding for the animation, which we began in the following sessions. Children were divided into approximately seven per group, and were one of the following locations: dairy, aquarium, moon, school, supermarket, beach, snow.
Laura working with children
Laura asked the children to consider where the front if the tableaux is, in relation to the audience - asking children to think about audience for the first time. She then asked the children them to come up with one sound effect clue to accompany the Tableaux.
The 7 groups chose - The Beach, The Moon (with aliens), Shopping centre, Principal's office, Aquarium, Dairy, at the Snowfields.
The next exercise is a progression of the previous exercise but includes the phrases -"With a" and "While a" using the existing locations:
In the the principals office, with a flood, while wearing a hat
In an aquarium with a fishing rod while a sink hole opens up
At a dairy with a camel when a black hole opens up .
At the snow with a teddy bear while a heater rushes towards you.
At the beach, with a crocodile, while a giant inflatable steak comes your way.
On the moon, with a milkshake while gravity completely reverses.
In a supermarket with a lemon tree while 100 cats have been released into the supermarket.
Session 2 – Split classes:
· 11.35-12pm: We began this session with Magic lantern demo (Jason) which led into whole group discussion around narrative.
Jason and the Magic Lantern
Jason described that our lantern is 1880's, and made in Melbourne 140 years old, and is a pre-curser to mobile phones. The Thaumatropes we made are pre-cursers to the magic lantern. Projectors are not very strong, compared to a mobile phone, but used to have a candle - so needed lots of darkness to show the image. Jason fixed this one we have at the school with a small theatre light.The slide images are not fascinating by our terms, but they were sooo interesting back in years gone by.
Jason discussed lenses, which was complex, but Kirielle came up with the analogous comparison of the way an image looks upside down of a glass of water.
The magic lantern is a pre-curser to animation. Jason showed the desert he had made, and then the same image with the camel he had cut out. Kirielle pointed out that a Mickey Mouse animation connected with this, but most commonly, before cinemas were around in the 1870's, magic lanterns were the most popular way to show slide images. Jason let the kids have a look at the slides, and explained how they were like one image of film still/slide.
Jason's original Victorian slide of a desert with a camel he cut out and inserted (camel is less than 1cm high - tiny). He showed this to the children as part of the Magic Lantern discussion.
Jason described how we went from shadow images created at firesides/by firelight, to other mechanisms (phantasmagorias), to thaumatropes, to photography, to magic lanterns, to moving pictures - videos and now to mobile phones.
The children asked lots of interesting questions about the machine, such as is this magic lantern a replica?
Penelope interactive story with dissection of narrative.
The purpose of the two sessions was to develop a story together, led by Penelope using interactive story method. Ideal outcome was to have two stories so we know content for the outcome performance and animation.
Penelope working on narrative with a small group of children, session 1.
Session 1
Set up:
Penelope opened the portal that you don’t have to put your hand up to contribute, you can call out as we go, then we’ll close the portal at the end of the session.
That all things need to come from your imagination
Set up that protagonist should be female or non-binary
This interactive story session started with the idea that we were going to create a short (5 minute) interactive story together to refocus the group, and then move onto a shared story that was dissected along the way, to ensure narrative structure. We ended up forging into the longer group story This didn't go brilliantly, as the children's ideas were wild - which is great, but not appropriate for making the works we are looking towards in the timeframe we have. Too much, too big (if we had 2 years here it might be different!).
Penelope divided the children into small groups of 4 or 5, and asked them to develop a story in these groups after establishing these choices from the group before we started:
The whole group was asked to choose a bird or a creature that we heard at Colac Lake, a native bird. Bird one, they chose a crow and bird two a duck. Kids were asked to name the birds when in thier small groups. The setting we chose was Colac Lake. In small groups, the children were asked to imagine/devise a problem for their characters, and to make it difficult. The characters could have/find/discover/acquire somehow one tool to solve their problem. Kids were asked to consider of the duck and the crow:
Are they buddies
Who is the protagonist (hero)
Is there a villain?
The kids struggled with collaboration, and Penelope tried adding more dramatic and narrative parameters to help. We ended up with a number of stories, but none really workable for animating or theatre devising (in the timeframe).
Here are examples of the stories the kids developed:
Story one:
Once there was a giant ant. This ant was so huge that it got shot (and killed) by a cybertronic cannon.
((End of story)
Penelope asked,"Was that satisfying?" Answeer was "No, because – we killed it straight away. No drama"
Story two:
Once there was a Hen called Mia. Mia had an enormous lemon, however the lemon is actually a pet who is cheeky and mouldy and sour and smelly and icky. The Hen Mia and the pet lemon live in a huge UFO. The whole exterior of the UFO is made out of spicy lemon slices. It is covered in bacteria. The Hen Mia and the mouldy lemon pet called Patricia are inside the spaceship which is filled with lime juice. Luckily Mia and Patricia are wearing protective suits that give them moisture and air. But the mother spaceship has just given birth to 40 tiny baby red evil lemons with extra large nostrils. The problem is that the tiny red evil lemons want to take out the lemons. Mia and Patricia are buddies and they are going to save the city.
In between session 1 and 2, Penelope spoke with Tania the teacher, and Tania explained that the kids had been working on narrative since year 2. She provided a worksheet which was incredibly helpful, as this was the key to connect the language of arts and education and simplify the task for session 2.
Worksheet provided by Tania.
Session 2
Session two ran much more smoothly than session 1 because Penelope now had the key to the communication provided from the worksheet, and also Penelope kept the narrative line simpler with tighter parameters from the outset. This meant we successfully kept one interactive, shared story going with the whole group. Every idea was considered, but when an idea didn't serve the main drive of the narrative, it was set aside.
Whiteboard notation of Pelican and Rosella qualities
Penelope started this session differently too. Once the birds were chosen, we used the qualities of these birds as the a starting point for narrative exploration. Here's a dot point of how this session ran, followed by the story we generated collaboratively.
Set up of the birds and creatures that we heard on our sound walk
A pelican and a crimson rosella parrot
Rosella character break down: is cheeky and quirky its small and curious, intelligent, brave upstanding takes on bigger birds
Pelican character break down: has a very big beak and holds the fish in there so they can save it for later, selfish and greedy, feisty, massive, motivated by food, intelligent
Pelicans mostly live in swamps and water – water birds. Rosella’s usually live in the forests and gardens and trees
Problem we could put between both characters: the pelican has been taking all the food in it’s huge beak.
Penelope working with kids in session 2.
STORY
Once upon a time there was a pelican who was selfish and has been taking all the food and saving it in it’s huge beak. Unfortunately, it’s habitat, Colac Lake has been polluted and all the fish have disappeared. The pelican has run out of food. The pelican lifts up off the lake in search of more food.
The rosella, who is brave and upstanding, and who’s home is the Botanic Gardens, goes to defend it’s territory from the pelican.
Unfortunately for the rosella, the pelican opens its mouth wide and captures the rosella in its enormous beak. The pelican comes down and lands in the lake with the brave rosella in the pocket of its mouth.
The cheeky rosella thinks “I’ve got to get out of here” (it’s a life or death situation).
First the rosella tries to fly out - but she cannot push the pelican’s beak open.
Then she tries to tickle the pelican from the inside of its mouth - but it doesn’t work because her feathers are too wet.
Finally, the rosella puff herself up, and using one, single tail feather, she tickles the inside of the pelican’s pocket-beak.
The pelican starts laughing. She opens her mouth wide she is laughing so much.
The crimson rosella takes her chance. She flies up, out of the pelicans mouth FREE!!
The rosella flies back to her home in the tree tops.
The pelican is left hungry in the polluted lake.
POSSIBLE CHARACTER NAMES:
Marley, Jill, Gertrude – Pelican
Billie, Martha, Joanna – Rosella
Session 3
Penelope shared the story group two had written with the whole year 5 cohort. She bought everyone up to speed on the characteristics of the rosella and the pelican. Penelope lead the break down of story boarding beats – what we might be seeing throughout the story, children describing what they imagined:
1. A pelican
2. A polluted lake
3. Pelican eating all the food
4. Storing food in it’s beak
5. All the fish has disappeared
6. The pelican leaves the lake in search of food (water dripping off it’s back/ feet)
7. The rosella flying in the trees (botanic gardens)
8. The rosella and pelican eye each other off
9. Pelican and rosella meet and pelican swallows rosella in its beak - POV of the rosella looking out of the pelicans mouth (or x-ray of the rosella inside the pelicans beak)
Callum then did a show and tell of the sounds he had collected over the past day or so.
Callum explaining sound design
The kids listened and guessed what the sounds were
- Bats (including bats fighting)
- Kookaburra
- Crow (raven)
- Branch moving across a tree root
- Then Cal played the sounds he had warped – crow into a base sound (pitch change)
Children were fascinated by this and we are bound to have some very interested sound designers in the group.
We then ran a production discussion
Illuminating for the children where we are heading, and what are you interested in doing?
Sound Team will be up to 5 children:
- Notating sound within stories
- Designing and sourcing sound from online
- Composition/design for animation and live performance
Design making team – Max 6-8 kids:
- Making backgrounds for animation
- Animation puppet making
- Costumes (silhouettes)
Stop motion: (Weekly work) Number of kids to be determined, but probably everyone will contribute.
Live Performance: 20-25 children engaged in performing.
Other roles:
- Assistant Directors Animation
- Stage management
- Publicity
Kids were VERY excited about all the possibilities! We talked with Lynne after the session, and hope that the children's interest will be their first choice, but that the teachers know their kids andwhat a child may need/benefit from.
Penelope ran the reflection, posing these questions - children's responses are dot-pointed:
What's one thing you’ve done that really stands out and you’ll take home
- Choosing what roles I want to take
- Zombie game
- Making a story
What's one thing you hope to make over the next weeks
- Stop motion animation
- Making the right decision about what role to take
- Making another thaumatrope
- Making things out of fabric
- Cleaning up of the show
- Doing the sound design
- Making animations
Are there any other last thoughts you want to share?
- Next week? Storyboarding (for animation and theatre)
- When will roles be chosen? (Soon, but need to talk to teachers)
- Are we doing any sound stuff?
ARTIST FEEDBACK
Laura
HIGHLY exciting to have a narrative after day 5. I’m thrilled that we have a story, created by the grade 5s that we will now work towards creating animation and a performance work for. It’s really encouraging that all our work together so far this term has lead up to this point, where we’re now ready to explore storytelling through different mediums. Personally I’m very excited to jump into devising with students and am keen to hear which of them are really interested in this aspect of the project. I was so pleased today to see how well most of the kids grasped the concept of location based tableaux work and how well they were communicating with their groups to develop their freeze frame. Observing that, it seemed to me that their devising skills have come along way over the short time we’ve spent with them, which coming into this next phase of the project is promising. My personal highlight from today was the year 5s sharing their Acknowledgment of Country with us. It was so meaningful.
Jason
Day 5 was a planning day. We visited the church hall where the performance will take place. There I measured, took photos, checked for power supply and looked at their lighting infrastructure. All this is required to get our throw distances right as we have not much time in space.
Day 6 was a busy day with the children. In the early part of the day I sketched through a design for possible projection scenario in the church hall. At this point it could be too complex a design but it is easier to take things out than to add things in. Today we worked on developing narrative both through the tableaux work and through developing a written narrative story structure in groups. Penelope can probably speak better to how that process changed from one group to another but suffice to say we developed a story together with the children that is the story we will be working with for the performance and animation. That is the story of the Pelican and the Rosella.
My concerns, which I raised at the end of the day, are that there is need to start developing the stop motion animation puppets quickly and that was something I want to do at the earliest opportunity next week. I believe we can start making puppets without knowing the full extent of the story. I also need to experiment with how to do backgrounds for the animations so that I have a clear plan for next week. The ideas around the background revolve around either a static image or a simple animated image. We have yet to allocate which children will be working in what capacity, but I imagine for the design team I would not require more than 6 to 8.
Callum
This week was a bit different. For starters, the school had a curriculum day on Monday, which meant the students weren’t at school. However, we did get to see the venue we’d be doing the performance part of the outcome, and it was great! An old church hall that will soon be demolished is an interesting place to perform. There’s a high likelihood that these students will be the last artists to present work in this venue, which, whilst a touch bittersweet, is also incredibly special for the cohort.
On Tuesday, I was, once again, not at the school, but this time for project based reasons. I had to collect a bunch of field recordings of the different sounds in the sound bank the children made two weeks ago. Ideally, in a project like this, I’d have the kids collect the recordings, but for time and legal reasons, that wouldn’t be able to happen. I might still be able to do a similar practice when making composition tracks though, which I think will be exciting. I collected a bunch of sounds from Lake Colac and the Botanical Gardens, and got some really great stuff. My favourite was recording two kookaburras that I followed around the park, as they had a habit of making a lot of noise whenever I wasn’t recording.
I took these recordings back to the school, cleaned them up and presented them to the class. I even got to show off a fun little acid-y bass I made from a raven's caw. After that we informed the students to begin thinking about some of the roles they’d like to do on this project. To my surprise, there was a lot more interest in sound than I’d thought! That’s an exciting and nerve wracking prospect. My next goal is to begin working out how to best incorporate sound for the students while still making it fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love sound design. But it can be quite long and tedious and boring at times, playing the same sound or track or section repeatedly, trying to make it work. I’m thinking for that reason, I might try and minimise the amount of boring audio processing the kids have to do, and focus more on the sound sourcing and creating part. Fingers crossed!
Penelope
The Year 5s sharing their Acknowledgment of Country with us was, as Laura said, beautiful and profound. We will start each session with this. Rapt that we did get a narrative (thank goodness!). I found the first session of group narrative generation really tough, and realised that in order to get this done, we need tighter parameters. Having the language barrier broken with that bit of teacher intel from Tania made all the difference. Now we have this narrative, the work is ramping up in intensity. We are on track with my time lining - slightly ahead actually, which is good as I think we have no time to waste in the development of this work. We have (once again) been very ambitious with our creative learning partnership. Dialling it in is never, ever an option, but it's always at this point in the process that I look at the mountain ahead of us and think "Uha. Yup. We are climbing that. Yup" - But, we have everything we need, at a beautiful school, with the right team of artists to get there.
In discussions with Jason about the story boarding and puppet making required for animation, we have decided that we will spend a day over this weekend developing first drafts of this, as we are not going to have time to create this wholly with the children. The kids will still be developing and creating so much of the animation, and I think the storyboarding focus will be to develop the theatre piece from the storyboarding we draft. This will enable us to get more quickly into puppet and backdrop making for the art-department team, and for dramatic narrative/physical theatre and costume creation for the devised theatre piece with Laura. This will help Cal and the sound team too, as straight away they will have something to start on this coming week. Jason and I will bring the animation table in on Monday (Jase has to design and build some lighting fixtures for it over the weekend), so we are ready to go.
