Education

The excitement of having something as unusual as the Movie Bus come along to their school encourages students to engage with the project, and makes learning fun. Visits to school groups are about much more than just showing a film.

The project is suitable for primary, secondary or older pupils, and can be adapted to focus on the needs of the class. A learning resource pack will accompany each film, with an easy guide for teachers, and ideas for taking the project further if desired.

The learning resource pack contains the following:

  • A DVD which introduces the project and explains the fascinating history of the Movie Bus and footage of a zoetrope in action.
  • Replicas of artefacts from the Bill Douglas Centre such as zoetropes, shadow theatres, praxinoscopes, phenakistocopes and magic mirrors, as well as information about the history of the moving image.
  • Materials for the students to make their own zoetrope
  • A camera and tripod
  • Flick books for the students to make animations to take home

There are two options. Each session will be delivered by our experienced Learning and Outreach officer, and there will also be staff present to operate the Movie Bus.

Option one – Schools and Youth Groups (2 hours): For younger students, half the class watches the archive film in the Movie Bus while the other half begin making zoetropes. The groups then swap over, and reconvene at the end in order to look at the completed zoetropes, learn about the history of cinema, and discuss the content of the film.

Older students can use the camera to capture the zoetrope animations on film. The students can work on standard interview questions and another camera is used to capture responses from people leaving the Movie Bus.

Option two – Youth Groups and Community Organisations (5 hours): Students make their own film as inspired by the historic footage that they have watched. The group will plan and make an edited-in-camera film,  linking in with the history of film-making, when most films were made this way. This encourages the students to think about forward planning, and they can create a plan using storyboarding before they begin filming. For this session, there will be an additional member of staff with specialist knowledge in film-making.

Depending on the teacher’s preference, the first archive film and the learning resource pack can be delivered in advance of visit from the Movie Bus. This will allow the students’ films to be shown in the Movie Bus when it visits, along with a second archive film.

 The bus has a capacity of 22, so depending on class size, the group can either be divided in two or watch the film together.

Over the course of a standard day, two sessions can be delivered for option one, or one session for option two. Although the cost of the programme is largely covered by a Digital Film Archive Fund grant, we ask for a minimum payment of £50 per day towards the Movie Bus Project in order to cover fuel, staffing and other overheads.