Let's Make a Movie!

Summer's over.  But it was a great summer.  Before the end of the school year my daughter rattled off a whole list of things she thought would be fun to do over the summer, and I jotted them down.  Whenever we needed a good idea for a project during the summer, we went back to what turned out to be a kind of summer bucket list. 

We made tie-dyed T-shirts, a pinata, cream-filled cupcakes and jam.  She had a lemonade stand.  We went camping and we went to the beach.  And, we made a movie.

This is the project that had me the most daunted originally - how to make a movie with a seven-year-old.  What's more, it couldn't be just any story - she wanted to do a Scooby-Doo movie.  Those stories tend to be long.  They include a van, a talking dog, and usually a supernatural monster villain who can fly, and who has glowing eyes.  And then luckily, one day my daughter brought home the perfect Scooby-Doo book from the library.  It was an easy-reader book, with only five scenes and four sets.  The villain was a guy who dressed up as a ghost.  It was totally doable.  I felt like a producer who'd found the perfect property.  We were in business.

So, one Saturday we had two dozen people over.  I had prepared the scripts for each scene ahead of time.  Most of them were short enough to fit on one side of a piece of paper, which was about the right length.  I thought I'd make it simple for the kids by highlighting their character's lines on the script, but the kids didn't really understand what a script was initially, or how to follow one, and thought those lines were crossed out.  So there was a little basic training required.  And I made a big grid of names to help me keep track of who played what part in each scene, or did sound effects or camera, so I could make sure to distribute those roles fairly.

Before lunch, one mom read the story out loud to everyone, while I met individually with kids to find out their preferences, for example who was too shy to have lines, and who wanted to operate the camera.  Then I split the kids into four groups to make the props and scenery.  One set of kids made the sign to hang on the Vinny's Pizza restaurant.  Another group made a treasure map.  Another group made a couple of fake pizzas.  And the last group painted big hunks of paper to magnet to someone's car for The Mystery Machine.

We ordered pizzas for lunch.  But before we ate them, we used them in the first scene that we filmed.  The kids practiced a few times, then we filmed it twice, each time with a different kid operating the camera.  The first time we ran the scene and I said "Action," absolutely nothing happened.  Turns out seven-year-olds don't know what that means.  They didn't know not to wander into scenes being filmed when they're not in it.  They didn't know not to walk in front of the camera, or to keep the camera turned on the actors.  But as we figured out what the kids didn't know, we explained it, and the kids did just great.

I had the kids switch off parts between scenes, counting on the costumes to identify the characters.   Most of the scenes were filmed at our house - the kitchen scene in the kitchen, the restaurant scene in our dining room, and the scene in front of the restaurant in front of our house.  Two scenes took place on a spooky road.  So my daughter and I scouted locations earlier in the week, and found an old alley just a block away where we filmed them.

Enough kids like Scooby Doo that we did all right with costumes.  Two girls had Daphne costumes from Halloween.  One dad had been Shaggy, so we used his costume, and one mom had been Velma.  For Freddy, someone brought a blue and white striped polo shirt, and we found a red scarf.  Scooby was tricky.  One little sister had a Scooby costume, but started crying when someone else put it on, and had to be taken home.  Her mom would have left the costume, except that another little girl tugged on my sleeve and told me she had a Scooby costume along.  Turns out it was just a brown shirt and brown pants.  But we did have a T-shirt here that had Scooby's face on it, so we used that as the Scooby costume in some of the scenes.

It took us four hours to make the props and scenery, and to film the five scenes, which is an hour less than I had planned for, and an hour more than the kids really had patience for.  But they stuck it out, did a good job, and had a really great time.  I've finished editing it now, and here are the first couple of scenes.