2015’s film project centred around the BBC’s Ten Pieces project.

The BBC identified ten pieces of classical music which they feel all primary school aged children should know and love. They invited schools to work towards a “creative response” to the music, ours have been in the form of a short film but very much guided by children’s ideas and the outcomes are rich and varied.

After two workshops for staff and pupil mentors covering basic film making skills, animation, composing with Garage Band and green screening, 11 primary schools set about the task of creating their film.

The films were screened at The Odeon Cinema in Hereford in July.

“What a fab event on Wednesday! The children loved it. Thank you so much for organising it.”

“Thank you for a wonderful morning! We all had a really lovely time.”

“Thank you so much for everything you organised to help us with the project and the premier. The children really enjoyed the whole project from start to finish. We all (me included) learn’t a lot. It is a fantastic project and so worthwhile. We will definitely be interested again next year.”

We want to say a big “thank you” to manager Rhys Davies and all the staff of the Hereford ODEON for making this exciting event possible. Thanks also to Rick and Julia at Catcher Media who have helped with the project

BOSBURY CE PRIMARY SCHOOL: In the Hall of the Mountain King

For our creative response to Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ we have used a combination of live action, green screen, animation and garage band.

We started off the project by writing stories about the Mountain King. We then came up with a class story board. We had the idea that 2 children went on a walk and stumbled across a mysterious cave. Initially the children were frightened but they soon discovered a magical, fantasy land full of weird and wonderful creatures. We went to the Malvern Hills to film our live action and as you will see it was a really rainy day!

We used garage band to create the accompanying music. We took the rhythm from the music and some of us used that in our compositions. We also matched the mood of our music to each part of the story.

We have all contributed to the film in some way and we have had lots of fun doing it!

BREDENBURY PRIMARY SCHOOL: Through the Caves

CLIFFORD PRIMARY SCHOOL: No One to Hear You Scream

The film that you are about to see is fully inspired by the amazing music of Edvard Grieg called ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King. For several weeks, we listened to the Ten Pieces music and watched the film clips before we chose the piece. We began to imagine what we thought might be happening and we drew pictures that we thought corresponded with the music . Next, we transformed our story ideas into a comic strip story map.

As a class, we chose our favourite story-  A story that was formed in the imagination of a 10 year old in our class who sensed an air of fear and terror in the music. After much deliberation, we decided to perform a dance of the story to the music. To choreograph the dance, we incorporated a sequence of 4 moves with links to perform at different speeds according to the pace of the music and had different groups representing fire, smoke and walkers.

We did a lot of rehearsing and practising with camera angles and different shots before we ventured out of the school grounds to our Forest School site for the final cut. It took a whole morning to film the final piece, but after hours of editing, we hope that everyone who was a part of our film masterpiece enjoyed making it and the composer would enjoy too!

Our adventure starts in a dark forest where three men walk, unassuming, looking for a lost dog until disaster strikes! They soon find they are trapped in a forest fire that rapidly spreads into a blazing inferno. The people are trapped by the flames – there is nowhere left to run. A strange dark silhouette glides towards them to seal their doom…

Warning: This film may contain scenes of horror that may give you nightmares.Not for children aged 7 and under. 

CRADLEY CE PRIMARY SCHOOL: Beowulf vs Grendel

GARWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL: The Garway Galaxy Suite

We started by watching all ten pieces and  talking about them after. We quickly discovered that Mars by Holst was the favourite. However, following our training  we returned to school with completely different ideas around other pieces.  Surprise! surprise!

The class quickly changed our minds back and we set about composing our own pieces of music about some planets we had created in Art. As a class we were also interested in animation so we put together a short sketch to accompany the music. We didn’t think people would just want to watch us all the time! Finally we were able to add some green screening . This was our favourite part.

We hope you enjoy our film as much as we did making it. 

HAMPTON DENE PRIMARY SCHOOL: A Viking Voyage

Year Five were very excited when we were told about the Herefordshire Computing Film Project.  It is the first year that Hampton Dene have taken part and we have loved it!

We started by listening to all of the BBC Ten Pieces and taking a class vote on our favourite.  Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain won the vote by a clear majority. We wanted to link our film in with our topic, the Vikings, so we drew pictures whilst listening to the music and from these created a collaborative storyboard.

Lily and Owen, our pupil ambassadors, showed us how to use a green screen and Animate It. We decided to use these film techniques and also combine art with digital effects. We all learned how to import audio, pictures and video into iMovie and edit our clips. We put them altogether to create our film, ‘A Viking Voyage.’

We are incredibly proud of what we have managed to make as a class and we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we have enjoyed making it. 

HOLMER CE ACADEMY:

We decided that we wanted our creative outcome to be art work based on the classical piece of music ‘Mars’ by Holst. Year 2 and Year 4 joined together to produce different pieces of art which we felt represented the theme Mars and Space. Designated children were then chosen to film us creating this art work so that we could use it in our movie.

As well as this, we used Garage Band on the ipads to create our own compositions inspired by the repeating patterns in the music. We learnt that this is called an ostinato. We also learn that the piece of music had a 5/4 time signature which is unusual and made it even more interesting. Finally we created an iMovie of our music and art work put together. We really enjoyed working with a different year group and having the chance to be creative. Thank you to the BBC, and especially Mark Sanderson for his ongoing support and for allowing us the opportunity to take part in the project this year. We hope you enjoy our film.

LUSTON PRIMARY SCHOOL: Symphony Number Five

The children have loved listening to the music and choreographing a dance which they thought matched it. The dance was designed by them, filmed in different sections and from different heights and positions and then edited to fit the music.

When they initially listened to the music they immediately thought of it as a conversation between two groups of people. They then suggested that it could convey a message. They thought that the different parts of the music could symbolise sequences of friendship and moments of bullying. At the end the two groups join together to demonstrate that two opposites can form a partnership. 

MORDIFORD CE PRIMARY SCHOOL: Ten Pieces

After watching and listening to the Ten Pieces we thought about how we could develop our response. We decided we wanted to create a film that showed how classical music can inspire us all while also reflecting what the pieces made us think. We wrote the script, planned the filming, organised props and locations and finished by editing it all together. We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.

ST THOMAS CANTILUPE CE PRIMARY SCHOOL: Mars and the Romans

We have used a mixture of real-life acting action and animation to create a piece linked to Holst’s Mars. We hope you enjoy it!

WELLINGTON PRIMARY SCHOOL: The Great Wellington Bake Off Blast Off

Our film was created in a mixing bowl. Literally! Our whole school listened to all of the BBC Ten Pieces and we voted for Holst’s Mars as our favourite. We then set about creating a set of images and a story to go with it…

We had hundreds of ideas, many with the obvious space theme, but we also had a few from ’outside the box’. Ella suggested a mixing bowl, mixing up cake ingredients, so we looked at ways to combine as many ideas as possible.

We had great fun exploring what the iPads are capable of and have become confident with all sorts of animation, green screen and filming techniques. We’d like to thank Catcher Media, Mark Sanderson and Jo Brace for their extra help along the way.