Jabberwocky Documentary posted by Lorraine

Mrs Elstone’s class
Jabberwocky Documentary (mockumentary)

13th December

After all Caroline’s work with the class on devising ideas for their jabberwocky documentary, it was time for us both to look realistically at what could be achieved within the constraints of the schedule. Although we wanted to continue to be ambitious, it was important that we allowed enough time for groups to be able to have a rewarding and enjoyable experience and to be really hands-on in the production of their films, not to have to rush the fun part!

With this in mind we looked at the planned sections of the film and decided that for now we would concentrate on producing the wildlife documentary part (act 2). This had lots of scope for creativity and experimentation and for the whole class being involved in production. Also this part could stand alone as a film if we do not have time to make the other parts.

Caroline and I spent a day with the group looking at storyboarding techniques, using them to communicate how the film will look and showing key scenes and the order of the sequence. They also began including information about framing, shots, camera and character movement.

The class worked as five production teams, each responsible for a different of the film.




Amazing Jabberwocky Team – Jabberwocky Droppings
Tulgey Experts – The Tulgey Woods
Illegal Eagles – Creatures of the Wabe
CSI Jabberwocky – Jabberwocky Evidence
G+P+R+J+A – The Jabberwocky Egg

They also began to plan what props and costumes they would need for their film, what would have to be found, what they would have to make and how they would make it.

Residency week 16th Jan – 20 Jan

Mrs. Elstone and the class had excelled in their efforts to complete all the pre-production work needed for me to start the groups filming this week. Now we had our Jabberwocky egg, Bandersnatch nest, poisonous flowers, jabberwocky footprints and tooth and everything we needed to dress our sets, all we needed to do was plan our shooting schedule around our Tulgey weather!

Working with their storyboards and a shot list the group filmed each of the scenes they needed for the sequence, once these were ‘in the can’ I allowed time for them to experiment with additional shots and takes that could be added.

In the Tulgey woods we filmed a scientist discovering the poisonous man-eating flowers which he picks and squeezes the poison out of the stem, and we filmed the discovery of the borrowgrove burrows and Bandersnatch nest by a roving exploring who is overcome by the strange sounds she hears in the woods.








Caroline meanwhile had worked with a group on setting the scene of the laboratory which had been brilliantly thought out and had lots of detail – down to jars of ‘acidic urine of the scorpic’ and graphs showing numbers of creatures discovered in the Tulgey woods.


In the lab we filmed an eye ball being extracted from a jabberwocky egg, and the dissection of jabberwocky droppings – which contained all sorts of surprises.
We then had to remove the ‘lab’ and transform it into a museum setting.
CSI Jabberwocky had collected things from around the school to create the illusion of a museum basement and we filled the shelves with stuffed animals and other curious artefacts that they had created names and labels for. This was where we filmed some of the jabberwocky evidence including a cast of footprint and a tooth kept in a very old box. We finished our schedule by completing some outdoor shots of collecting the egg and discovering the droppings.

The enthusiasm of the class has been amazing and I have been so impressed by their dedication to the task. They were all keen that their films looked as professional as possible, they listened carefully to instruction and quickly picked up the camera skills and techniques, framing, focus and panning. After initially mentoring them in filming the scenes I could begin to stand back and let them take full creative control, they worked as a team and made decisions together about framing and shooting and whether the take was good enough. I had some great feedback from Mrs. Elstone regarding the sessions, as she too is learning about film production the children were going back to class and teaching her about the techniques they had learned.

The next step for the films is for the class to work with Kate, putting some of the music they composed onto their films – some of them also have some voice-overs to record.