Film Studies Show and Tell

Have you ever watched your favorite cartoon and wondered how it's made? A movie is not just one picture -- it is thousands and thousands of pictures shown very fast, one after another, so fast that your eyes see it as smooth moving action! Today we bring in three special things from a movie set and talk about the big job each one does.

- The three big jobs behind every movie: story, camera, and actors - What a director does on a movie set - How a storyboard helps people plan a movie before filming - One new movie word you can use at home

Every movie starts with a story. Someone called a writer thinks up what happens: who the characters are, what problem they have, and how it gets fixed. Before anyone films anything, the story gets drawn out in little boxes called a storyboard, kind of like a comic strip. Each box shows one moment, so the whole team can see the movie before it is even filmed!

The camera is the movie's eye. It can be far away to show a whole castle, or super close to show just one eye blinking. A person called the director decides where the camera should point and what it should show first. Directors are like the boss of what we get to see, moment by moment.

Actors are the people who pretend to be the characters in the story. They practice their lines (the words they say) many times before the camera ever turns on, in something called a rehearsal. A good actor makes you believe the pretend story is really happening, even though you know it's make-believe!