BBS has a Spectrum of Stories to Share!
Expression phase is looking a little different this year! With our new home, slight time setback, and adjustment in resources, Blue, Orange, Green, Teal, and members of Amlet decided to take Expression in a different direction, with group projects! In order to form these groups, we had students brainstorm ideas of anything and everything they wanted to do for Expression.
The Brightworks Broadcasting Service (B.B.S.) initially came together as a group of students who wanted to do storytelling for their Expression projects, under the aptly titled group name “Storytelling.” During our first brainstorm, kids shared out the different ways they wanted to tell stories—through a choose-your-own-adventure book, a skit, a nature show, a graphic novel, a series of restaurant-reviews, a show about drawing. As we pieced together these different ideas, we decided to form our own broadcast station modeled after KQED and PBS. We called it BBS—the Brightworks Broadcasting Service! Our goal is to educate our community about fun, interesting and delicious activities and places around us.
We worked on our group declaration and presented to our peers our plans and ideas. As we did for Amlet and the other multi-band expression groups, we were assessed in the areas of:
- Weekly Goals: How realistic and clear are the weekly goals presented for this project?
- Resources: Does this project have clearly defined, realistic, and enough resources in and out of our current space?
- Research: Does this group have specific and relevant books, videos, and other media that can support the project?
- Roles and Responsibilities: Are there enough clearly defined roles for all of the individuals in the group throughout the project?
- Impact and Audience: Does this project help both creators and the community?
- Magic: Does this project have that special something that we all look for in a project?
We received incredibly thoughtful and helpful feedback from Amlet and our friends in the SF Models group...and were approved! Our work was cut out for us with just 6 total weeks left of school and a variety of days out and about, and so, BBS set to work!
Made up of Ramses (Green), Nolan (Orange), Emilio (Orange), Thomes (Teal), Charley (Orange), Apollo (Green), Dash (Blue), Sakira (Green), Amiya (Amber) and Erik (Violet), the BBS crew is creating the following shows for the public’s viewing pleasure:
- Bugs and Small Animals with Dash: a nature show that features our smallest friends found all around us
- Sketch with Sakira: Sakira will host a drawing tutorial show for the art-lovers in our midst
- Apollo’s Bite!: Apollo will sample and review a Tacolicious lunch for our audience's enjoyment
- Charley's Comedy Corner: Charley's love of comedy is infectious and will delight audience members of all ages and bands
- Reading Rainbow with Thomes: Thomes will read aloud two original stories--a comic co-authored by Emilio and Nolan, and a choose-your-own-adventure story written by Jack Bloodstone
- Synesthesia Studies with Erik: Erik will explore the concept of synesthesia, a condition in which one sense (for example, hearing) is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses (such as sight).
Amiya is filling the role of producer for these educational and fun shows, working with each show writer to create and maintain a pre-production and filming schedule, as well as providing general feedback and support.
With our line up set and students excited to get going, we spent our first two weeks preparing for filming days. Show writers considered the intended audience and purpose for their shows before they began writing preliminary scripts, scouted locations, and reached out to experts and the community. Our authors worked on first and second iterations of their stories, writing furiously and voluminously. Preliminary shots were taken and shows were really starting to come together. We just needed a little inspiration and background understanding of just what makes public media so special.
And what better way for our fledgling public television station to prepare for our first broadcast than to visit KQED! BBS took a trip to San Francisco’s venerable radio and television station. We got an exclusive behind the scenes peek at all of the moving parts that go into public media!
Stay tuned for when we air our shows on June 3 and 4! BBS is sure to entertain, inform, and delight!