Grade 7s begin the year immersing themselves in short stories. By the end of their first unit they had produced several pieces of writing, all of which focus on taking different perspectives and experimenting with writing techniques. Next, they selected a story to turn into a 55-word short story to be assessed. Turning their mini story into a video was a new way for students to integrate technology and celebrate writing in a different medium.

Grade 7 student Ara interviews her classmate Olivia on her movie making experience.

• How did the Spark Movie come about?

In this unit, we wrote three short stories and chose the best one to develop into a movie using Adobe Spark programme. Our Digital Literacy Coach, Mr. Lagos gave us an overview of Adobe Spark and showed us how to make our stories come to life.

• Would you say the whole process including the writing and making of the movie was challenging?

The difficulty of the writing process was up to the author, some stories were harder to write than others. In my story, I had to come up with unique vocabulary to fit the character, some colloquial words or slang. It was difficult to match: either the dialogue was more challenging or the plot was too intense… Once the writing is over, the process of making the “movie” was pretty simple and a lot of fun. However, it was a long process: we needed to be creative and concise while we recreated pictures, did voice-overs and reworded the story itself.

• What was the inspiration for your “movie”, Olivia?

I got my inspiration from a book I read, titled Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare.

• Was the use of Adobe Spark new to you? Was it complex or simple to use?

Adobe Spark was new to us, but it was very self-explanatory and simple to use. Thanks to its simple features, all we needed to do was to use our imagination and creativity.

• What aspect of the Literary Analysis Chart helped with creating the plot of the story?

The Literary Analysis Chart helps us understand the techniques used by authors to develop their plots, such as setting, characterisation, conflict and climax. In this case, the Chart helped us plan the sequence of events, with conflict, climax, and resolution stages. Whether our stories had a cliffhanger or a normal ending, we were required to follow the classical storytelling stages. Some of us wanted to add irony to their story and some truly succeeded in doing so. One of the important decisions we had to make was the tone of the story: whose perspective was the story going to be told from? We also needed to include context which explained the setting and characterisation.

• What made you want to use this point of view or perspective?

I wanted to be the narrator and used the third person to tell my story. I thought being the narrator gave me more control over the story and it was easier to show the direction that I intended to go.