Last Monday, on May 25, 2026, my school had the incredible honour of having a TVO film crew come to record footage for an upcoming documentary on media literacy education. It was a lot of work to prepare for their arrival, because many classes were featured and everyone involved needed special permission forms signed. However, it was a very educational experience for the students. I hope that they learned several things about the visit. Here are a few things I hope the students appreciated.
Many People Make Movies
We had a team arrive at our school to collect footage. Everyone had a role to play.
This reminded me of the drawings I commissioned my daughter to create long ago to show the different jobs involved in the film industry. (I'll see if I can find it and include it here in the blog post. ETA - I couldn't find the file in time to share here but if I locate it, I'll add it eventually.)
Jen was the Production Manager. She kept the crew organized. She handled all the bookings and the paperwork. It was Jen that collected all the permission forms. She managed the logistics and schedules.
Kevin was the Producer and Director. He had the vision for what he hoped to see. He instructed the rest of the crew about possible shots and whom to film. Kevin watched the footage and asked questions of me and of the students.
John was the primary camera person. He filmed the video using a huge camera. He'd line up shots and recorded from several different angles using different lenses.
Chris was another camera person. He collected "B roll" footage as well as different angles to complement the ones John collected.
Sanjay was the sound technician. He carried around the long boom microphone and hung it over students when he needed to hear them better. He also wired me up with a body microphone so I could be heard.
Nathan was the assistant. A recent graduate of Seneca and York, Nathan offered help to John and Chris with batteries, wires, lenses and other equipment.
Everyone was important to the process and worked long and hard.
Lots of Time, Lots of Tech
The team from Primitive Entertainment Inc. (the ones filming on behalf of TVO) arrived at 8:10 a.m. and didn't leave until after 5:00 p.m. They had a trolley full of technology. The students were fascinated with the fuzzy cover on the microphone (there to stop rain and wind from interfering with the sound quality), the big lenses (which they had to avoid staring directly into because it ruins the shot), the tripod and term I forgot (half mat?) that held the cameras steady for longer periods of time, and Kevin's viewfinder that showed him what John was shooting. One of my students kept saying "pictures, pictures" when he saw the crew in the hallway.
When the students asked about when the movie would be ready, Kevin explained that it should be finished by next school year. This could be anywhere from September to June, but Kevin and his team had many schools to visit and, if they filmed as long as they did at my school, there would be a lot of footage to sort through and select for the final project.
Filming Doesn't Always Go According to Plan
We had a schedule of classes to see and moments to capture, but sometimes circumstances altered the plans. Sometimes a tangential comment would lead to interesting questions, or something unexpected a student would say would interest the director and have the crew focus elsewhere. We were a bit delayed moving from the library to go to see some of the primary classes and record some of their reading instruction. Big thanks to Sheri Hajiani and Maha Ngo for agreeing to have the crew film them teaching.
Sometimes something would interest the camera people as they filmed extra material to use in between shots, so they'd film in the hall or outside. It caused a bit of a stir, but people needed to understand that close-ups were only of students with forms and outside shots were distant enough to obscure faces, and were primarily just wide-view filler content. The crew was very respectful and were extremely accommodating to the wishes of others in the building. We ran out of time with Room 113 and our own sound malfunctioned on showing a video, so they returned back to the library to "finish up" for an extra ten minutes of filming, and the videographers really seemed to like filming some unscripted interactions between me and the students as they began to write a draft copy of an email to an author.
I expected that we'd "casually manufacture" a conversation around replacing a library tree book display during the second-last period of the day, (a clear connection to media) but instead, the focus for the time Room 112 was in the library centered on the students serenely reading and borrowing their books, while the director asked them questions about the books they liked to read. The camera man said he captured some great shots of the students blissfully reading with the afternoon sun streaming behind them. Even though Media Key Concept #2 is "Media construct versions of reality", and filming students reading (and asking them questions on camera) wasn't "natural", it was more "authentic" than what we had planned about the library tree.
During my ESL class first thing in the morning, one of my mischievous students decided to put his name tag (that was originally attached to the props he needed to make his comic on Book Creator) and stick it on my back. I didn't notice until the director asked if I realized I had something on me!
If/when I share this blog post on www.aml.ca, maybe I'll list all the Media Literacy Key Concepts and how they connected to the day. Let me end by saying it was a great experience. I hope that the footage they collected was useful to the project and that it will advance the cause of media literacy in the province and country.
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