(Language Arts/Social Studies)
Created and Designed
by Nichole R. Beltz
Introduction | Task | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion | Credits
As a child, you and your family, along with a couple of your friends from home, used to vacation on various tropical islands in the Bahamas. While renting a beautiful, ancestral home on one of these islands, you and your friends discovered an old journal hidden under the floorboards in the attic playroom. You read the journal and kept it until you were an adult.
You and your friends now work as a movie producers in Los Angeles. Trying to come up with a new idea for a movie, you remember the journal that you discovered in your childhood. It is now your goal to get that journal produced into a blockbuster movie that will perhaps make you all millionaires. Follow the steps below to work your way into stardom.
What do you have to do to get this movie made? As the producers of this movie, you have several responsibilities and three weeks to meet them. In order to get this movie into a studio, you must do a lot of background research and groundwork. It's not necessarily glamorous work, but it will be worth it when you're all millionaires. By following the steps in the "Process" section, you will succeed in creating a presentation that will persuade investors, advertisers, and movie studio executives to produce your movie.
Above all else, you and your childhood friends (your partners) must work cooperatively. You all must figure out who will perform which tasks individually and which tasks you will work on as a group. (These separations of tasks are up to your group.) As you complete the activities and write in your journals, you must document what specific work you accomplished, since you will be graded as individuals. You will also be graded on how well you worked with the members of your group. Each group will complete an evaluation of their groups at the end of the assignment.
Step One (for ALL group members): Re-read the journal, which you have since titled "The Yellow Wallpaper", in order to reacquaint yourself with its content. (You may also see your teacher for a copy of the story.) In your journal, write a brief summary of the story.
Step Two (for ALL group members): Start keeping a journal of the process that you will follow to get this movie made. Write down all of the steps that you take, detailing the specific work that you accomplished for each step. The advertisers and investors funding your movie will want to see exactly what amount of work you accomplished--or they might not want to pay you.
Step Three: Any good movie producer does his or her research. In order to create a believable script and characters, you need to do research in several different areas:
A. Research postpartum depression and the effects that this disorder has. Two sites from which to start are:
~The National Women's Health Information Center
~"Postpartum Depression and the 'Baby Blues'"
Take notes in your journal on what you have found out about postpartum depression. In your journal, write a brief report on your findings. Explain how the woman who wrote the journal fits the symptoms of postpartum depression, citing specific examples, and explain how the actress who plays the lead role will have to act to portray the woman realistically.
B. Research the roles of women in the 1800s, the period in which this journal was written. Start your research with the following site:
~"The American Woman of the Early Nineteenth Century"
Find one other good website (the qualifications for which we discussed in class), write down its URL, and take notes in your journal on what you have found out about the roles of women in the 1800s. In your journal, write a brief report describing these roles. Explain the effect that these expected roles would have on the woman who wrote the journal and on her relationship with her husband. How will the actors and actresses portray these roles and beliefs?
Step Four: Cast the movie. In your journal, make a list of all the characters that will be included in your film. List the current Hollywood actors and actresses who will play those roles, and paste a picture of that performer in your journal. For each cast choice, explain why you chose that particular person to play that particular role. You must convince the director that your choices are perfect, or the director may ignore your suggestions and cast people that don't fit the roles.
Step Five: Choose an important section of the journal to rewrite as in the form of a movie script. This should be a crucial section of the journal (such as the climax), and it must include dialogue, even if that dialogue is in the form of a interior monologue. Write out the script for this scene in your journal. Visit the following site for a quick reminder of how to write a script:
~"Scriptwriting Secrets: Writing Your Million Dollar Story" (go to the section marked "Dialogue split by Action".)
Step Six: Create a 3-dimensional set design for the attic bedroom in which most of the movie will take place. Recreate a room that is as identical as possible to the room described in the journal. Before you start this project, go back through the journal and make a list of all key descriptions of the room. Follow these descriptions when making your model. (Note: pay close attention to the author's descriptions of the wallpaper and the state that the paper and the rest of the room is in.)
Step Seven: Gather all of your journals and prepare to give a presentation to the investors, advertisers, and movie studio executives (your classmates) who will ultimately decide whether or not your movie will be made. Type your research reports from step three (Times New Roman 12, double-spaced), your cast list with explanations of your choices from step four, your section of the movie script from step five, and your list of setting descriptions from step six. Copies of these will be given to the people who control whether this movie will be made to aid them in their decision-making process.
The following page will present the rubric which will be used for this WebQuest. Please read this form before beginning the process for this WebQuest, and refer to this rubric while working on your WebQuest.
Once you have completed the entire process, you (and this means each member of your group) will be asked to present your information to the rest of the class, who will be acting as the investors, advertisers, and movie studio executives who will decide whether your movie will get made or not. They will send you evaluation forms to let you know whether your film will be produced or not. Good luck!
Remember, no matter what happens with the making of your movie, you and your friends have accomplished many things. From all the research you did to get this movie made, you have learned about the hardships faced by women in the 1800s and women suffering from postpartum depression.
Information and images provided by:
"The Short Story Classics: The Best from the Masters of the Genre"
The National Women's Health Information Center
"Postpartum Depression and the 'Baby Blues'"
"The American Woman of the Early Nineteenth Century"
"Scriptwriting Secrets: Writing Your Million Dollar Story"
DESIGNED BY:
Nichole R. Beltz
10th Grade Language Arts -- Tamaqua Area Senior High School
Last updated on June 17, 2002
