Educational activity based on the short film Perfect Houseguest
9-11 years: Represent the surrounding world or give shape to their imagination by exploring a diversity of artistic fields. Choose, organize and use gestures, tools and materials according to the effects they produce.
6-9 years: Create visual-art works. Propose inventive responses in an individual or collective project.
Perfect Houseguest © Tiny Inventions
TitlePerfect Houseguest
ThemeAnimals
Genre & keywordsWonderful, walk, mouse, storage.
Age (for the film)3-11 years
Duration01 min 34 s
DirectorM. Porter & R. Kuwahata
MusicBram Meindersma
ProductionTiny Inventions (United States, 2015)
Analyze an artistic technique and reproduce it in their own and/or a group piece.
This short film allows us to follow a little mouse who cleans and tidies the house. It contains two different kinds of element that blend together: images from reality (live-action footage filmed with a camera), and drawings which come from the author's imagination. It can serve as a starting point for a visual arts unit. After a first viewing, ask the children to describe the elements that are in the short film. Through a question-and-answer session, make them aware of the fact that the short film is made up of a mixture of images from reality and drawings imagined by the creator. Is this video a film or a cartoon? What's the difference? Play the video again and use freeze-frames, ask the students to describe what they see: photographic image taken with a camera or drawing?
After this analysis, students can be asked to create a visual production mixing photographic images and drawings. Everyone will have to define a theme. Offer them magazines from which they will cut out images and stick them onto a backing sheet. They must then add their own drawings. Each of them will then be able to present their work to the class, and it will be interesting to compare the productions.
Activity sheet written by: Valérie du blog Val 10. Discover the Val 10 blog...
