Poet Laureate

As a special reward for being crowned Rotherham’s first Poet Laureate, three students from Rockingham J & I School, Markela Islami, William Richards and Connor Garbutt enjoyed a filming day experience creating a video for their poem at the brand new studios at Rawmarsh CLC. The day started in bright spirits with everyone giving themselves a new name using their first name followed by a type of food, which got everyone relaxed and raring for the day.

 

After this amusing warm up the group began work on recording their poem and under the guidance of Dale ‘Doughnut’ started to record the vocal parts of the poem which could be synced over the video later in the day. All 3 students had chance to work the camera, hold the microphone and record their voice, learning lots about film making in the process. Several great ideas for the video were discussed and noted down to try later in the morning.

After spending the morning in front of the camera recording their poem, the winners enjoyed a relaxed lunch before getting back to work on editing the film and surfing the internet finding the backgrounds they wanted for the poem. By acting in front of a green screen backgrounds were able to be manipulated so that the three winners appeared in a classroom, on a mountain and even flying in the sky. While Dale ‘Doughnut’ put the finishing touches on editing the poem, Markela, William and Connor enjoyed some funny creative time making videos of themselves, manipulating their faces using a program available on the computers.

At the end of the day Deborah Bullivant, the Director of Inspire Rotherham spoke to all 3 of the winners and reminded them of what an excellent job they had done and the ways in which they will be representing the borough at future events.

Markela, William and Connor all had a valuable experience and the final DVD of the poem shows what a great talent all 3 of them are and a worthy display of what Rotherham has to offer.