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Tag Archives: Benjamin Britten
Session 6 • Completing the Animation
“This year The Boarding School for Girls has been invited to take part in the international animation project devoted to100-year anniversary of the great British composer Benjamin Britten. His music is diverse: he composed music based on important social events, music for professional musicians and students, for big symphony and chamber orchestras, for soloists and choirs. One of his most popular works is “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”. Its animation has become the main aim of our school along with students from England and Bulgaria. Each country has been given one-minute piece of this music composition. The idea of popularization of Britten’s music in the 21st century has been carried out by a creative group from Great Britain. Our project supervisors first met with the members of this group in spring. The animated fragment will be sent to the project organisers who collect all information about everyday working process on the project. In autumn a full-length animated film based on B.Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” will be created. It will include the work of students from our school as well as the English and Brazilian students’ animations. Participation in the project was very exciting and useful.”
“We would like to mention the basic stages of the work on the project. It consisted of 6 blocks.
Firstly, we got acquainted with Britton’s personality, we listened to extracts from “the Guidebook” and tried to find the connections between music, forms and moving images.
Then we discussed the history of animation art in Russia and in the world. We also watched the first animated films and analyzed various ways of animation.
We have tried to achieve thorough understanding how images can be used to convey impressions of music and sounds.”
“In the 3rd part we learned about different techniques of making animations. We found out that cartoons can be created with different hand materials (for example sand, clips, beads and paper), we learned what frame by frame filming is and that its picture frequency is twenty-four pictures a second. We also found out what sound waves are and we experienced the storyboard of our future animation.
Later we were shown the software, recommended by the project managers that were in charge of “IStopeMotion” for I-pad. We worked out and wrote the plot and then our school was divided into three groups and as a result each one created her own test- version cartoon.”
“Then we came up to the main aim of our school, which was creating a cartoon that would be sent to England. The students were divided into three groups with the tasks each. The first was to make a cartoon, the second- titles, the third – commented on the work process.
Our music part lasted for 54 seconds. Taking into consideration that one second is 24 shorts, we had to create about 1500 shots, where a black and white background, round shapes and symbols of Russian culture were to be used. We equipped our set with a black cloth, searchlights and a base for I-Pad. We chose play dough as main material.”
“The Project was time- consuming (labour-intensive) and exciting at the same time. We thought over the composition, colour, logic coherence in the change of images, coincidence of culmination parts in music and in depiction. We realized what creative search and creative discovery mean. Depicting the symbols of Russia, we tried to express love and pride for our Motherland. At the end of each day we had feedback with the help of a moving camera. We summed up what we had done for the day and shared our impressions . At the end of each task we put the information in the blog where we told bloggers about our achievements and success and disposed our photos.”
“During our Summer School each student had a great possibility to show their creative skills for during our lessons we drew and discussed the ways we understood music, suggested our ideas on the cartoon. Each of us would like to take part in such a project without any doubts because it gives everybody a great possibility to understand what you are good at and what you can do.
We would like to thank Olga Alexandrovna Blotnitskaya , the head of the laboratory of innovation technologies, English and Technology teachers , sound technician Evgeniy Ivanovich Ilyin and the reporters of Journalist school for help, provided during the process of making an animation film.”
Rotator Reflection Video of session 6 by the Cadet Boarding School for Girls.
All other photos can be found here.
Session 2 • Introduction to Animation
“In session two, we increased our knowledge about his life. And as we were listening to the music, we drew pictures to show what we thought of it. We also looked at abstract videos.”
Rebecca Sampson, age 10
“The music is about different insurments. In are section there are violins, drums and trumpets. In places it goes high and low. There are some dramatic parts and some calm parts.
In the first bit of are animation there is glitter poring out of a colmans musterd pot and it represent the sea.and then the next thing what happens is the crab takes the hork then the canries swisle around the sea in a circle. There is a boat what comes in and sales across the sea and there are two fish that goes across the sea. Then the castle rises from the sea.The sun comes up and then the castle comes down and forks stabs the sun.So then Benjamin pops out out of the sun.”
Tia-lily durrant, age 10
More photos of the second session here.
Session 5 • Production
All other photos of the brilliant working young ladies you can see here.
Rotator Reflection Video of session 5 by the Cadet Boarding School for Girls.
Session 4 • Animating and group working
“Today we were divided into 3 teams, we created a set and at this lesson the first team started creating a cartoon. They tried to use the iStopMotion program, decided on the materials that would be suitable for our film. By the way, when we started using this program we uploaded music and different sounds there and took some photos.
The second team created credit titles.
And the third team took photos of our work, wrote notes for the forum and encouraged us a lot.
We are looking forward to the next lesson.”
Watch the process of the animation film also at the Flickr photostream here.
Session 2 • Introduction to Animation
“At the 2 lesson we were tough the history of cartoons. We were told what kinds of cartoons there are and how they are created. We were talking about the first characters in Russia and English cartoons. Then we answered question and memorized the first Russian cartoons. It was very interesting and fun.”
Also have a look here.
Rotator Reflection Video of session 2 by the Cadet Boarding School for Girls.
Session 1 • Context
“From the 1st lesson we have discovered the great British composer’s music such as Briton’s music and have tried to show our imaginations using pencils and pieces of paper. We saw different examples of cartoons from all over the world. Each of the videos is unique in its own way. It may be due to the diversity of countries where they have been established. Internationality of this project is one of the best it characteristic. Hope that we will work well together. Thank you for your attention.”
Fore more photos click here.
Rotator Reflection Video of session 1 by the Cadet Boarding School for Girls
Session 1 • Context
“In session one, we learnt about Benjamin Britten and his history of music. We were also introduced to the young guide to the orchestra project. As we talked about it, we were even able to listen and watch three clips of the music.”
Rebecca Sampson, age 10
What I think of the young persons guide to the orchestra:
“I think the young persons guide to the orchestra is very tuneful. At one part it sounds like someone royal is walking up to a castle. It can be loud and quiet at different times. My favourite part in our part of the piece of music is probably the part with the drums going “BANG BANG BANG”. The instruments include trumpets , drums , violins and much more.”
Luke, age 9 (nearly 10)
More photos of the first session here.
Animating Britten 