Short Film Project: Architecture In My Community

Architecture is the perfect medium for teaching students to be curious, informed, and empowered to interact with the built environment in their community. By learning ways to examine their community's built environment, students gain a sense of ownership and pride in what exists in their own backyard.

Goals:

* To promote individual accountability, ability and learning
* To promote teamwork toward a common goal
* To create awareness of architecture as a potential career choice
* To promote good community relations among schools, business, and the public
* To demonstrate that a number of different subjects areas relate to the architecture.

Students will research historical and contemporary architecture in Sacramento, CA. Each team will address the following questions about their building of choice:

1. Who was the architect of the building?
2. What are the building's unique features?
3. How does the building reflect our region?
4. What kinds of construction materials were used to build it?
5. Who are the past and present residents of the building?
6. What were the challenges or criticisms of the building?
7. Why should people visit the building?

Students move to a storyboard to prepare a graphic representation of how their video will unfold, shot by shot. This will be made up of a number of squares with illustrations or pictures representing each shot, with notes about what’s going on in the scene and what’s being said in the script during that shot.

We will then use a half-day bus and travel to locations to shoot their videos.

Students will spend a few class sessions editing their work for final release. Final pieces will be published on YouTube for peer and instructor critique. Top films will be sent to our local Chamber of Commerce to promote our city.