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SANDY — Rachel Bingham, a first-grade teacher at Bell View Elementary in Sandy, likes to use film to facilitate learning in her classroom.
“I take a lot of video of my class for the school year. I make trailers for field trips, and for school projects we work together to create trailers and movies in my classroom,” Bingham, 47, said.
Parents love to see their children at work and play on the private site that Bingham created to house their classroom videos, but It’s also a fun, hands-on learning technique that helps her students express themselves in a way that their early writing skills would not accommodate.
“Especially with first graders, they’re very limited by their writing abilities, but they can tell great stories if you just sit down and listen to them, or if they can make a video of what they’re thinking,” Bingham said. “They have amazing ideas and amazing, wonderful imaginations, and if they’re not so limited they can do amazing things.”
So when Bingham happened upon “Canon’s Project Imagination: The Trailer” contest, she thought it would a fun project to focus on with her students. For the contest, participants of all skill levels came up with ideas for a movie and made trailers using Canon’s trailer creator.
“We kind of brainstormed together as a class, just some of their ideas, what they loved and what kind of a movie they would like to see, and they just had some really great ideas,” Bingham said. “I use everything as a learning opportunity, too. We storyboarded it and created it together and brainstormed together and then just filmed. And the filming went really fast and they just kind of came up with their own ideas for how to film it all.”
Rachel Bingham/"Ninja School"
What resulted is the action-adventure trailer (above) called “Ninja School,” where kids are the heroes — ninja heroes. In the trailer, when everyday inanimate objects come to life in their school, the kids have to figure out how to stop them.
The top 15 trailers were announced by the two-time Academy Award winning director Ron Howard and “Hunger Games” star Josh Hutcherson, who are involved in the contest.
“As a veteran filmmaker, I appreciate the value of edge-of-your-seat creativity in filming, and that’s what ‘Project Imagination: The Trailer’ is all about,” Howard said in a press release.
Bingham said she never expected the trailer would get any attention.
“We had no idea. I mean, I didn’t expect to hear back at all, I just thought it would be a fun thing for us to do and participate in,” Bingham said. “It was just a really great experience, and we are just so pleased and thrilled that anyone even noticed it.”
Bingham, a graduate of Brigham Young University, said the only experience she has with filmmaking is using her Canon Rebel camera that “does everything for you,” and learning what she can from YouTube tutorials.
The next round of voting in the contest is now open to the public. Howard and Hutcherson will pick the final winner based on “overall impression, inspiration and imagination,” according the release, and that trailer will be developed and produced by a group of professionals as a short film.
To watch all 15 trailers and vote for your favorite, visit the contest’s website. Voting closes on June 10 at 6 p.m..
