Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival / 2014


exhibition overview

Only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World remains – the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. So, the question is: what is a wonder? The National Wool Museum decided to explore this theme through the wonderful world of film. We put out a call to all aspiring and professional filmmakers, vloggers, YouTubers, artists, school kids and media students to enter the Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival.

What is a Seven Wonders film?

Well, it’s anything you make it...

  • Your seven favourite things about Geelong
  • Seven days, hours or moments in your life
  • Your story told in under seven minutes
  • Is the number seven really lucky?
  • Seven awesome things you can do that nobody else can
  • The only rule is that it must be a silent film and under seven minutes long!

The National Wool Museum encouraged entrants to use their imagination when considering this year's theme, Seven.Any type of film was welcome – documentary, narrative, animation, art piece, adventure, comedy, thriller, action and more. Entrants were invited to submit a 100% silent film no longer than seven minutes for their chance to win in a share of some fantastic prize money.

The exhibition features a selection of 30 films created by filmmakers from primary school students through to professionals, projected in a number of thematic groups. The total run time of the exhibition is approximately 90 minutes.

All films are also available to watch online at

EDUCATION concepts

Exploring a museumis a great way to model life-long learning, the process of questioning and seeking answers as you engage with a particular environment.Independent of gathering specific curriculum content, the museum provides a training ground for learning skills development. The information and tools within this kit have been divided into four broad skill categories, each identified with one of the icons listed below:

/ Knowledge and Understanding
-What do I already know?
-Fact gathering / / Thinking
-Asking questions
/ Communication
-Sharing questions and answers / / Application
-Making connections and creating next steps
1 / NATIONAL WOOL MUSEUM
Seven Wonders Film Festival: 16 May – 27 July 2014
Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival / 2014

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS

Year 3 - 4

Communication

  • Explore a range of aural, written and visual communication forms such as the Internet, film, texts and music which illustrate a variety of perspectives on a range of topics and ideas.
  • Learn how to identify the main message, develop their own interpretation, and provide evidence to support it.
  • Explore reasons for other interpretations not being the same as theirs and learn to respect the right of others to express opinions.
  • Begin to order logically the ideas that they wish to communicate.
  • Reflect on their own and others’ presentations and note the features that make them effective.

The Arts – Media

  • Select, combine and experiment with ways of using a range of arts elements, principles and/or conventions, skills, techniques and processes, to explore arts ideas sourced from their imagination and from their own and other cultures.
  • Explore and respond to their own and others’ arts works, students develop skills, techniques and processes for expressing emotions and ideas, and signifying purpose.

Year 5- 6

Communication

  • Experience a range of aural, written and visual communication forms in both formal and informal settings
  • Interpret these forms and being to understand that their interpretation may be influenced by their own knowledge, values and beliefs, by persuasive devices, and by the opinions of others.
  • Develop their skills in organizing ideas and information logically and clearly to suit their purpose and the needs of their audience.

The Arts – Media

  • Research, improvise, practice and rehearse skills, techniques and processes, using a range of media, materials, equipment and technologies.
  • Learn to evaluate their own and other people’s arts works showing some understanding of selected arts forms and their particular techniques and processes as well as an emerging understanding of the qualities of arts elements, principles and/or conventions

Year 7- 8

Communication

  • Respond to a wide variety of aural, written and visual media. They explore both implicit and explicit meaning, how the author has structured and presented ideas, and whether they have used specialized language or symbols to communicate their message.
  • Reflect on and evaluate the effectiveness of a variety of media in communicating a similar message, considering accuracy, inclusiveness and the techniques used to shape audience response.
  • Focus on identifying the key messages they wish to communicate and structuring their ideas logically and coherently.

The Arts – Media

  • Develop creative and effective ways of combining and manipulating arts elements, principles and/or conventions when designing, making and presenting arts works for particular purposes and audiences.
  • Explore point of view, lighting, camera angle, shot types, symbols, cartoons, shape, colour, etc to fulfill a design brief.
  • Use appropriate arts language when discussing their own and other artists’ intentions and expressive use of arts forms, elements, principles and/or conventions and when describing, analyzing and interpreting the content and meaning of arts works

Year 9- 10

Communication

  • Explore how effectively meaning has been communicated, analyse alternative interpretations and develop a rationale for their preferred opinion.
  • Experiment with communicated complex ideas in a variety of ways. They increasingly use metaphor and symbol to communicate.
  • Organize information, ideas and opinions into a coherent structure, select and adjust their mode of presentation to suit purpose and audience, and make appropriate adjustments in response to an audience.

The Arts – Media

  • Focus on the development of knowledge and understanding of key concepts, techniques, processes and practices associated with particular arts forms.
  • Develop skills in presenting and justifying personal interpretations of, and opinions about, arts works using appropriate arts language

1 / NATIONAL WOOL MUSEUM
Seven Wonders Film Festival: 16 May – 27 July 2014
Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival / 2014

KEY VOCABULARY

Camera Angle / The way the camera is positioned relative to the subject. A high angle makes the subject seem weaker or more vulnerable, while a low angle suggests more power.
Cinematographer / The person in charge of lighting and what the camera shows on film.
Close-up / Something remembered from the past – fact, event, experience, person.
Cut / When 2 shots are joined with no break or transition between them.
Edit / The process of ‘making’ the film, where moving images are combined in a particular order to create the final product
Festival / An organized series of events, in this case silent films
Film / a story or event recorded by a camera as a set of moving images and shown in a cinema or on television
Frame / One image
Lighting / The way the film is lit to create meaning.
Pan / Swivelling the camera from a fixed position.
Perspective / A point of view; a particular view relative to the position of the viewer
Scene / One section of film that takes place in real time in one location
Sequence / Several shots in an order that make sense
Shot / Anything recorded from one position between start and stop.
Storyboard / Used to plan a film, it provides an overview of key scenes or sequences, including camera angles, movement, and transitions
Synopsis / A summary of the film plot

Preparing to visit

Part of the engagement of a museum lies in it being a physically distinct learning space compared tothe ‘traditional’ classroom.To make the most of the experience, expectations should be discussed before attending and experiences debriefed after the visit. Avisit should spark questions and creative responses.

background

A brief timeline from motion picture to film and sound.

(aso.gov.au/chronology/1890s/ and

1878 / British photographer Edward Muybridge takes the first successful photographs of motion, showing how people and animals move.
1889 / Thomas Edison and W.K. Dickson develop the Kinetoscope, a peep-show device in which film is moved past a light.
1890 / Henry Sutton, an amateur inventor from Ballarat, Victoria, proposes the construction of a device that will transmit moving pictures. He called it thetelephane; however, it may never have been built.
1893 / Thomas Edison displays his Kinetoscope at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and receives patents for his movie camera, the Kinetograph, and his peepshow device. Edison constructs the first motion picture studio in New Jersey.
1894 / The first screening of film in Australia took place in a Sydney shop. The public paid a shilling to view images of an American circus and vaudeville performers on the Edison Kinetoscope. Unlike the later movie projection of the Lumière Brothers, the Kinetoscope was a box containing a 50-foot loop of film watched through an eyepiece by a single viewer. 25 000 people paid to watch the Kinetoscope in the first month of exhibition.
1895 / Two French brothers, Louis and August Lumiere patent a combination movie camera and projector, capable of projecting an image that can be seen by many people. In Paris, they present the first commercial exhibition of projected motion pictures.
1895 / In the Queensland mining town of Charters Towers, the Edison kinetophone made its first Australian appearance. A combination of the Edison kinetoscope and the phonograph Edison had invented, it synchronised images with sound delivered to an earpiece from a wax cylinder. The Rockhampton Bulletin noted 'indeed every word can be heard with the utmost distinctness’.
1896 / Thomas Edison's company, using a projector built by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins, projects hand-tinted motion pictures in New York City.
1896 / The earliest surviving motion picture film shot in Australia is believed to be Patineur Grotesque (1896). Also known as The Humorous Rollerskater, it is a short piece that shows a man in costume on rollerskates performing a comic act for a gathering crowd.
1903 / Edwin S. Porter, chief of production at the Edison studio, helps to shift film production toward story telling with such films as The Great Train Robbery, the first western.
1905 / Cooper Hewitt mercury lamps make it practical to shoot films indoors without sunlight.
1906 / The first animated cartoon is produced.
1906 / Running between 40 and 60 minutes depending on film projection speed, The Story of the Kelly Gang was the first feature-length narrative film produced in Australia. It is believed by some film historians to also be the first of its type in the world. Filmed over several months in the Chartersville Estate near Heidelberg, Melbourne, by director Charles Tait, the film was shown silent in a country test run before opening in Melbourne on Boxing Day 1906 with live sound effects added
1909 / The typical film is only a single reel long, or ten- to twelve minutes in length, and the performers were anonymous.
1911 / 1911 was a benchmark for Australian film production, with 52 narrative fiction films released. Many were bushranger films, a genre banned in three states the following year. This level of production remained unsurpassed until 1975. It is widely accepted that in 1911 Australia produced the largest number of feature films in the world
1912 / In 1912 the US-based National Kinematograph Company produced and exhibited the first colour films shot in Australia. Using their patented Kinemacolor process, the company showed a series of short travelogues and films depicting Australian industry at work. The high cost of projection and the scarcity of colour films made such screenings rare in Australia until the 1950s.
1922 / Lee DeForrest demonstrates a method for recording sound on the edge of a film strip.
1925 / The first inflight movie, a black & white, silent film called The Lost World, is shown in a WWI converted Handley-Page bomber during a 30-minute flight near London.
Western Electric and Warner Bros. agree to develop a system for movies with sound.
1926 / The word "documentary" is introduced. Warner Bros.'s Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, contains music but not spoken dialogue.
1927 / Warner Bros.'s The Jazz Singer, presents the movie's first spoken words: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet." The Vitaphone method that the studio uses involves recording sound on discs.
1928 / Mickey Mouse is introduced in the cartoon Steamboat Willie.

practice

  1. Planning a film. Explore Mark Cousins’ scribbles in preparation for his documentary “A Story of Children and Film” and read his statement on planning the film.
  2. Play Consequences This is a practical group exercise similar to the old parlour game of Consequences, when the sound and picture from different groups are put together, a third variation on the theme is created. See directions in Resources, pp. 16-17.

you be the judge

Imagine you were a festival judge. What would you look for in a film? Think about the sorts of films and TV shows you like to watch. In small groups, use the template on p. 18to make a list of things that you enjoy about these films. In the overlapping area, create a list of the top 5 things that make a movie great.

Use this template to evaluate the films you view during your visit to Seven Wonders.

engaging with your visit

This exhibition features 30 films produced by filmmakers from a variety of backgrounds around the world including Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and Australia.This film festival is distinguished from other local film festivals in that all films had to be silent. No sound effects, aural dialogue, music or other sound could be used to help convey meaning in the films. They are entirely visual.

Self-guided exploration

Students need time to familiarise themselves with their environment and to orient their interests in the space. Allow a few moments in eachgallery, of free wandering before introducing an activity or leading question. The exhibition as a whole runs for approximately 90min. The films have been organized around the gallery in six themed pods. The films within each pod run on a continuous cycle:

1 / NATIONAL WOOL MUSEUM
Seven Wonders Film Festival: 16 May – 27 July 2014
Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival / 2014
  1. One Minute Films (9 films)
  2. Primary & Secondary Students (5 films)
  3. Tertiary Students (6 films)
  4. Open Comedy (4 films)
  5. Open Sci-Fi, Mystery, Thriller (3 films)
  6. Open Art Films(3 films)

1 / NATIONAL WOOL MUSEUM
Seven Wonders Film Festival: 16 May – 27 July 2014
Seven Wonders Silent Film Festival / 2014

search and record

All submitted films were judged against four criteria. Use the judging template found in the resource section (pp. 19-20) to assess 3 films in the exhibition. Alternatively, use the judging form you created in class to compare the films. Share your judging results with your classmates, did you notice different features of the films? Were certain features more important to you than others?

At the end of your visit, vote for your favourite film for the People’s Choice Award which will be announced at the end of the festival.

Content summary: a way in

Before arriving at the National Wool Museum students should be given a brief overview of the building and exhibits they will be seeing. If you will be focussing on a particular theme or display encourage students to generate questions and goals before arriving to shape their visit.The following exhibition content notes will help you get started. Films can also be previewed at:

All films were judged against the following four criteria.

  • Innovative approach or reference to Seven Wonders theme
  • Visual Composition/Cinematography (technique, consistent and intentional)
  • Narrative (or for art films, a unifying creative concept)
  • Production Design (props, costumes, sets, locations)

Selected comments from judges:

  • It’s always good to see artists approach a topic or theme in a lateral way rather than take things literally. One of the hardest categories to judge was “innovative approach”: how do we define ‘innovative’ today? This collection of ‘Seven Wonders’ explores the possibilities of filmmaking through such a diverse range of approaches. Wonderful!
  • One of my favourite films was 1 Button, 7 portraits, it was unique, shot beautifully and cleverly conveyed dialogue through actions.

FILM / RUN TIME / CATEGORY / GENRE
Seven Things I Do When I’m Bored
This is a brief video of what I do when I have spare time, while being bored. / 2min 5s / Primary / Drama
Seven Crazy Things To Do at Eastern Beach
We love going to Eastern Beach to swim and slide down the grass hill. We had fun making this film, especially walking around the foreshore thinking of crazy things to do. We had to make the signs in the cafe because it rained the whole day! / 2min 16s / Primary / Comedy
Environmental Problems
Its about people having a great time in a city but at what cost, like a monkey paw myth. / 51s / Primary / Documentary
The Five Cent Piece
The film is about a boy who comes across a five cent piece on the path and wonders what he might be able to do with it. Later he accidentally swallows the coin. Five days later a use for the five cent piece presents itself. / 2min 39s / Primary / Drama
1 Button, 7 Portraits