Memefilms-Tar Wars 4-Comedy that is Deadly Serious

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Comment by James Valastro on March 30, 2009 at 7:02pm

This 6 min. video was filmed in one day with the 10 students that showed up on a Saturday. My pre-production time was teaching them how to search the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and to try to explain the process of being an actor in a movie (it's not easy and it's exhausting) . The script was written by me trying to sew together all the potential actors, the locations, the limited time we had, and the the process of showing youth successfully searching the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. The principal was very willing to have that great cameo appearance and the students were of course most excited about using the Lightsabers. Rural youth are extremely susceptible to tobacco advertising and so the overall tone of this video is another experiment in promoting self-efficacy and empowerment over the tobacco industry. The goal with all our media literacy videos is to have the students have 100% of the power and the tobacco industry 0%. A friend of a friend gave me permission to use his original music and the man who did all of the sound effects for Star Trek-next generation, made three custom sound effects just for us. The explosions are free or almost free from Detonation films.com, the Star Wars lightsaber sounds were found on the Web. The Lightsabers we now use are the "good kind" (don't even ask how much they cost each). Memefilms.org is all about experimenting combining media literacy education with digital media creation. Students usually don't wake up and say- I think I will fight the tobacco industry today... but they do dream of making or being in a movie. So here we are after 7 years. Comedy- that's Deadly Serious.