​Lord of the Flies

The English department of Open Gate has decided to make a project based on a book called Lord of the Flies written by William Golding, where different English groups would work together on presenting the story in four different ways: as a puppet theater, a bird view theater, an animation, and a classical theater.

Lord of the Flies as a Classical Theater

By Natalie Žalmanová, Nikola Suntychová, Marianne Garignon, Václav Kerekanič

Our part was the classical theater. We covered the last three chapters of the book. For us, it was quite a challenge because we had never encountered anything like this before. Every time we had done a theater play before, there was a teacher who was in charge. He was the main director who led our work. However, in this project, Ms. Adamova provided us with knowledge we needed, but then we were the ones in charge. We wrote the script, we made the props, we divided all the work equally, so that everybody would get involved, and we had to cooperate and effectively communicate with each other!

Our aim was to make a movie out of this project, which we had quite a struggle with because we had to record the whole play in just one shot, fitting into under ten minutes. Despite all the difficulties we had to face during the realization, we managed to fulfill the requirements that were expected from us.

We made a wonderful movie, we enjoyed the course of this project, and we gained new knowledge from this unusual experience.

When Puppets Portray Lord of the Flies

By Tereza JakoubkováDuring the past weeks, Kvinta and Sexta English groups united in order to transform the novel Lord of the Flies into a movie. Each group was assigned certain chapters and then tackled them differently, ranging from animation, to bird view, classical theatre and finally puppet theatre that I participated in.

As mentioned above, my group was portraying the plot by playing a puppet theatre. Firstly we all worked on the script but then decided to work separately on re-writing the script, creating the puppets and the backdrops. After all tasks were completed, we moved on to the filming. The filming seemed challenging but we figured it all out and finished all of the scenes in three days. Lastly, we edited the video and added effects. Despite our inexperience, our video and performances were of high quality.

Lastly, I would like to comment on my role during the project. After our group divided, I was in charge of creating the puppets. Mr. Chytrý provided us with socks and from that, we sewed on buttons as eyes, string as hair and red cloth as mouth. We also added a few touches, such as bandana or boots to distinguish the characters. At the end of the project, I also edited and formatted the final video. For me, the project was really interesting and definitely improved not only my sewing and English, but also my communication skills.

In conclusion, all of the groups combined the separate videos and created a high quality movie full of great performances and interesting representations of the famous novel. However was the project challenging, in the end, it was all worth it.

Lord of the Flies: Animation

By Michal Medek

Our group was supposed to create a video about the first three chapters of the book “Lord of the Flies”. The video should have been an animation with dead flies. The first thing we did was writing the script. We were given exact instructions about the format of the script. The whole group participated on the creation of the script. One person sat and wrote down whatever the other ones told him. The people who were telling what to do had the book, or eventually an internet summary of the book, and produced ideas about the setting and the speeches of the individual characters. Afterwards, we were able to produce a quality script over a short period of time.

Next, we drew the settings and the props. We were supposed to use dead flies as the characters, but in the end we bought grasshoppers instead. The animation itself took place in the “photo studio” in the basement. Installation of the camera was the most difficult part. We had to make sure that the camera won’t move so the pictures stayed the same. After 6 hours of work, we produced an animation nice for our purposes.

The next day we had to record the voices. Each person of the group had to record a part of the script. In the end we connected the voices with the animation and prolonged the scenes for the voices to fit in. After a few improvements, we were finished. It was a very difficult and time-consuming task, but in my opinion, we managed to produce a fine piece of work. Not only did we practice English but also working in a group.

Lord of the Flies as a Bird-eye View Theater

By Dominik Bures, Robert Bihary, Hanka Tyburcova

Last semester, Mrs. Pospisil gave us an assignment. Working with the kvinta class students, we had to write a screenplay project based on the book Lord of the Flies which we had all just read in class. Four groups were created and each group was assigned four chapters to turn into their screenplay.

At the beginning of the project, Mrs. Pospisil taught us how to create a script. Even though the script was something new and a little terrifying for us, we slowly made it in the end. Our class divided into three groups of two members each, and we each worked on one of the three chapters that were given to us. We created the script for about one week. Proud of ourselves, we peer edited it together and then began to film the script. We were told to film it in a unique way, so we filmed it from the top down – or the “bird’s eye view.” As a group, we started to draw and make the props based on our, and Mrs. Pospisil’s, great suggestions. It took approximately three hours to make everything, but in the end the scene was perfect.

While filming, we discovered faults in our script and spent an hour and a half fixing it, so that the final version was worth it. The filming was a long process. We spent around two weeks filming because we didn’t expect that the preparation of memorizing lines would take so much time. We found learning the lines very difficult; however, by some miracle we learned them and tried to make the best performance possible. Matej, with the help of Mrs. Pospisil, successfully edited the video for our group. Then, the final step was to put all of the edited videos together between all four groups, which was done be a video editor from each of the groups. In the end, we viewed all of the films together in the theatre, even inviting the other sexta class to come and be our audience members.

This project was different than the other projects we have had. Not only did we enjoy it a lot, but we had great fun during the filming. It was also a good experience, and it prepared us for another time and an even better performance. We’re really proud of our class that we were able to complete a project like this. It was a great idea because we learned a lot, we used our imaginations, and we saw that we could make a nice piece of work in the end.

Finally, the movie you can see here.