Kindergarten Movie Collaborations Across the Globe!

A little over a week ago I stumbled across a video that had been created by by a kindergarten class at Pasir Ridge International School in Indonesia! They sent it out into the cyber world without any audio hoping to reach a few other classes who may want to add it on. It just so happens our current unit of inquiry is about how "People have different ways of sharing stories" under the Transdisciplinary Theme "How We Express Ourselves". So I jumped at the chance for us to be involved in a project that would help the children think and learn more about the concept of 'perspective'. I showed the video to the children and they could not wait to get started! We spent a lot of time analyzing the video before we even got to looking at the plot.

Here is the original video without Audio:

Escape from the Dark Side: Part 1 from ben sheridan on Vimeo.

1. First, we decided we had to figure out WHO was in the story, so we watched it one time round and counted the characters. Some of us counted four and some of us counted five. We watched it again and realized that one of the characters wore a hat in the beginning and took it off later in the movie. We verified it was the same character by looking for details that could identify him, namely, his skin was blue! The conclusion was that there were FOUR CHARACTERS.

2. Next, we decided to name the characters. We all decided that the fair way would be to take suggestions and then vote. At the end of all four votes we named them:

                Hoowee                                    Bad Hat Man                              Space Man                               Bad Cape Man

3. Then, we decided to begin the story by thinking about why Hoowee was trapped in the first place! After some deliberation, we decided that Hoowee was trying to decorate Bad Cape Man and Bad Hat Man's house by scribbling on the walls (I love that they saw that detail of the background and used it in the plot!). Bad Hat Man got very angry at Hoowee for doing this and locked him up!

4. Two or three at a time the children came over to the computer and looked at a portion of the movie. They decided what the characters might be saying at that time, how they felt, what their voices may sound like and what sound effects may be necessary. We were pretty low tech with our sound effects but the ideas were totally student driven. Besides, aren't little kids the best at making awesome zooming, slashing, swishing or stomping noises anyway??? Here is K1PA's version! We are really looking forward to hearing the original audio as well as other versions that are being created by other classes around the world!

Escape from the Dark Side from Pana Asavavatana on Vimeo.

Special thanks to Ben Sheridan, the teacher behind the original idea! Check out how the original stop motion movie was made with his students and other awesome work HERE!