Competition | POPtalk

20 Oct

And…action! Make a Tim & Moby movie competition

BrainPOP UK Spotlights 7 Comments

Attention fledgling writers and movie producers!

As part of our forthcoming Spotlights, Weaving Tales and Making Movies, we have a challenge for you. Weaving Tales is about storytelling, and the skills you need to create a good story and Making Movies is about the art of film making – whether it’s animation or a major Hollywood blockbuster.

The competition challenge: Make a short movie starring Tim & Moby using one of 3 scenarios.

To help you take you from script to screen we’ve written our own 3 step plan to help get you started: Tim & Moby’s guide to making movies .

The winning entry in the 7-11 category will win a Flip Mino HD 3rd Generation camera and a collection of the Radio Times Top 10 family movies ever on DVD.
The winning entry in the 12-16 category will win a Flip Mino HD 3rd Generation camera and a collection of the BFI’s Top 10 British films on DVD plus the book, play or screenplay.

Competition submission criteria:

This competition is for children between 7-11 and 12-16.
The winner will be chosen by the BrainPOP UK team. Editors’ decision is final.
You must use one of the scenarios below as the starting point for your movie.
The deadline is midnight 16th December 2010. Entries received after this point will not be considered.
Finished movies must be under 3 mins and be all your own work.
They must be in a digital format.
The winners will be contacted by email in the new year.
The winning entries will be showcased on this blog and shown at BETT 2011 on our stand.

You can read our full Terms and Conditions on our website.

Please download these three scenarios and pick JUST ONE to form the basis of your Tim & Moby script. Where you take it is up to you!

Script Option 1 – Adventure

“Tim and Moby stand in the Prime Minister’s secret underground office…“

Script Option 2 – Romance

“Tim stands alone in a shop browsing through a rack of t-shirts. Moby comes stomping into the shop accompanied by a stranger…“

Script Option 3 – Horror

“Tim and Moby are walking through a cold, dark forest…“

TOP TIP! Watch The Writing Process , Writing Dialogue & Filmmaking movies on BrainPOP UK to get advice from Tim & Moby.

You are welcome to submit your finished movie in any way you like, as long as it can be accessed online.

Live acting: You’re going to need a camcorder or phone with a camera function to record your movie, actors, a studio space and costumes. And find someone to shout “CUT!”
Green screen: You might also want to use chroma screen technology (here is a very useful and comprehensive step by step guide to using green screen in the classroom by Sheffield South Learning center).
Stop motion animation: You could use claymation like Wallace and Gromit, papercraft like “Star Wars in 2 minutes” or using physical objects like the amazing “Dot. The world’s smallest stop-motion animation“. Have a read of this wonderful guide to stop motion animation for beginners on Photojojo.
Audio play: If you don’t have access to a camera, you could just record your script as a podcast play with sound effects – a fun challenge on its own! Try Podium.
Digital animation: There are lots of amazing animation tools online. Try Anithings (animations), Zooburst (3D pop up ebooks), Xtranormal (you type and the characters talk) and Comic life (make a comic form your images) and many more. Or you may be a Flash guru.

You can submit your finished movie if it’s under 10MB using the form below. If it’s over 10MB or you host it online get in touch with info@brainpop.co.uk.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with. Good luck everyone.

Aaaand, ACTION!

For Your Information – The Movie

BrainPOP UK website, News and Views 2 Comments

We’re about to welcome a brand new feature to BrainPOP UK: The FYI.

FYIs contain astonishing facts, figures and information, to be used as extension material to the BrainPOP UK movies. Every movie will soon have its very own FYI.

And, just for fun, we’re putting together a little viral movie that we want YOU to star in called “How many ways are there to say “For Your Information“?

It’s very simple.

Video yourself or create an image saying/displaying the phrase “For Your Information“.
Say it, shout it, whisper it, sing it, sign it, synthesise it. Write it on a blackboard. Create it in alphabetti spaghetti. Ask your parrot to repeat it. Any way you like (be creative but no naughtiness please).
Submit your video or image using the form below or by email to info@brainpop.co.uk

Some last things:

It has to be your own original work. Don’t include any commercial music or anything as we won’t be able to use it.
The final edit will be going on our Youtube channel as an embeddable, sharable movie.
The best/most creative/funniest “For Your Information” will win a 6 month subscription to BrainPOP UK. Editor’s decision is final. Everyone who submits an entry will have a sneak peak at some of the FYIs in advance.
The cut off date for submissions is 5pm 9th September 2010, so you’ve only got about a week to join in. Its premiere will be 13th September, alongside the FYIs.

So go for it! Tim, Moby & The BrainPOP UK team cannot wait to see what you can do.

West Lothian winners

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Thanks to everyone who came along and helped make a success of the West Lothian BrainPOP UK demo at the West Lothian Education Centre yesterday.

We’re really glad so many teachers attended and were keen to have a shot!

Thanks especially to all who took part in our mini-competition.

Congratulations to t-shirt winners, Kirsteen, Jennifer and Ms. Ferguson! Your Mobylicious prizes are heading northbound today so keep an eye out for a pretty orange package popping through your letterbox…

And the winner is…

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How often do you hear the following phrase, directly after someone receives a prize:

“I never win anything!”

Well, we hope the following schools utter this immortal phrase when they read their emails this morning. Because they all won some nifty prizes when they came to chat to us on our stand at a recent Aberdeenshire authority event and signed up to a free trial.

First prize – A 6-month school subscription to BrainPOP UK, a limited edition Moby T-shirt and a mug:
Morag Andrew at Fishermoss School
Second prize – A limited edition Moby T-shirt, mug and mouse mat:
Allicia Coates at Mearns Academy
Third prize – A limited edition Moby T-shirt and mouse mat:
Jill Duncary at Clerkhill School

Well done to all 3 of you.

So next time give the competition a try – you never know when it might be YOU!

Flower Power

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A few months back we received an email out of the blue from a lady called Patsy from Hamlets florist in Eccles, Manchester.

She said:

“We are organizing a flower painting competition for primary school children in our local area…we have variety of prizes which includes a meal for four at The Pasta Hut and cinema tickets for a family. Good prizes during the credit crunch. But we need a golden prize, one that all the competing schools will be talking about and aiming for. Now, could we ask you if you could possibly sponsor one of or the overall winner?”

By Eccles, how could we resist? It’s lovely to be considered to be a golden prize. We said we’d be happy to provide a whole school annual subscription and 5 home use subscriptions, for parents and kids to use out of school.

To make it a little more fun we created some prize certificates. Moby’s painting was not quite as good as the winners, but he has used a bold palette and has always taken a Fauvist approach to his work, so full marks for trying.

PS: If you’re holding an art competition in your school and want to use this certificate contact us and we’ll amend the text to whatever you like (as long as it fits), for free, and send you the new image for you to print. Perhaps our Impressionism movie might inspire you.

12 primary schools eventually entered with lots of wonderful still life paintings of flowers. The presentation night was held at the Working Mens Club in Patricroft. The winner was announced and prizes presented by the Mayor on the 24th March.

Clarendon Cottage Primary school was announced as the overall winner but…well, I’ll let Patsy explain:

“I have got one problem. Nobody from the overall winning school, Clarendon Cottage, turned up on the presentation night! The headmistress said she didn’t know they had to come.

I couldn’t change things at such a late stage as it wasn’t the children’s fault. But I did not feel it was right just to drop off the silver cup and the golden prize at the school. A proper presentation of the golden prize and of the cup was still needed even for the child’s sake and also to get you and the Children Services some pictures for your efforts at the very least.”

So the BrainPOP UK golden prize was eventually presented not by the Mayor but by Patsy herself. And for all the effort she went to arranging all this for her local community we think this worked out just right.

So well done to Patsy and everyone at Clarendon Cottage, the standard of entry was extremely high. I’ll leave the last comment to her: “Anyway, the outcome is that the interest for next year is so far through the roof going on the feedback, and parents have called in the shop to thank us.”