Abingdon’s Film Academy – the partnerships offshoot of the AFU – enjoyed a busy day of activity at Larkmead School last week, where 15 enthusiastic and talented Year 8-10 pupils from Larkmead gathered to shoot two short fiction films they had been planning and storyboarding in weekly after school sessions throughout the Lent Term, led by Jeremy Taylor, Abingdon’s Director of Arts Partnerships. AFU tutor Duncan Pickstock joined him and Andrea Phillips, Larkmead’s Head of Visual and Performing Arts, to supervise a tight filming schedule, which required the footage for each film to be recorded in no more than 90 minutes – hence the need for all the detailed planning beforehand. Each film took account of the school setting, and required students to either act or operate camera and sound equipment – or, in some cases, do both! Next week, for the final session of the term, the students will try their hands at editing, and aim to complete rough cuts of the films by the end of the session. Next term, their edits will be fine tuned, in time for a screening of the finished films at Larkmead at some point in the summer.
The filming session capped a bumper fortnight for arts partnerships activities, in which more than 600 pupils and staff from partner schools visited Abingdon to watch screenings of the Donmar Warehouse production of Macbeth, featuring David Tennant and Cush Jumbo, on the big screen in the Amey Theatre. Shakespeare’s enduring classic is a GCSE set text for many students of English and Drama, so the opportunity to experience the play in performance was a richly rewarding one for those who may previously only have read the text. Opportunities such as these are at the heart of what Abingdon’s partnerships programme strives to offer.
