Supreme Court Movie Trailer

History Challenge

 

Submission Due Date: April 5, 2024

 

Designed for Middle and High School Students

 

Table of Contents ·      The Challenge ·      Assumptions and Logistics ·      Process ·      Meridian Support Resources ·      Presentation of Learning ·      Evaluation Rubric ·      Essential Questions ·      Student Proficiencies ·      Curricular Correlations: Common Core and C3 Framework

Range of Activities ·      Historical Research – Primary and Secondary Sources ·      Historical Research of Select Supreme (World) Court Case ·      Organization of Research into Clear Sequence of Events: Storytelling ·      Historical character and scene creation ·      Script writing ·      Digital Literacy Skills – Video – Pre-production, Production and Post-production ·      Human Skills – Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Presentational Skills

 

The Challenge

Brown v. Board of Education … Miranda v. Arizona … Bush v. Gore … District of Columbia v. Heller:  these and many other earth–shattering Supreme Court decisions have contributed to the shape of the nation today. Each case is also rife with vengeance, egotism, deep intelligence, hysteria, unpredictability and much, much more. In short, the elements of a really good story!

Pick a 20^th or 21^st century seminal Supreme Court case and create a one-two minute movie trailer advertising a movie that is based on your select case, focusing on the conflicting positions taken, the characters involved and the drama that ensued. While this entire document references Supreme Court cases, you may also select a World Court case (in your mind, insert ‘World Court’ for every reference to ‘Supreme Court’).

Deliverables include:

• Movie Trailer (this is the only Meridian Stories deliverable)
• Narrative Outline (at teacher’s discretion)
• First Draft Script (at teacher’s discretion)

 

Assumptions and Logistics

• Time Frame – We recommend that this digital storytelling project takes place inside of a three to five-week time frame.

• Length – All Meridian Stories submissions should be under 4 minutes in length, unless otherwise specified.
• Slate – All digital storytelling projects must begin with a slate that provides: 
  • the title of the piece;
  • the name of the school submitting;      
  • the wording ‘Permission Granted’ which gives Meridian Stories the right to a) publicly display the submission in question on, as linked from, related to or in support of Meridian Stories digital media; and b) use or reference it for educational purposes only, in any and all media; and
  • We strongly recommend that students do not put their last names on the piece either at the start or finish, during the credits.

• Submissions – Keep in mind that each school can only submit three submissions per Competition (so while the entire class can participate in any given Challenge, only three can be submitted to Meridian Stories for Mentor review and scoring).
• Teacher Reviews – All reviews by the teacher are at the discretion of the teacher and all suggested paper deliverables are due only to the teacher. The only deliverable to Meridian Stories is the digital storytelling project.
• Teacher’s Role and Technology Integrator – While it is helpful to have a Technology Integrator involved, they are not usually necessary: the students already know how to produce the digital storytelling project. And if they don’t, part of their challenge is to figure it out. They will! The teacher’s primary function in these Challenges is to guide the students as they engage with the content.  You don’t need to know editing, sound design, shooting or storyboarding: you just need to know your content area, while assisting them with organization and time management issues. See the Teachers Role section of the website for further ideas about classroom guidance.
• Digital Rules/Literacy – We strongly recommend that all students follow the rules of Digital Citizenry in their proper usage and/or citation of images, music and text taken from other sources. This recommendation includes producing a citations page at the end of your entry, if applicable. See the Digital Rules area in the Meridian Stories Digital Resource Center section of the site for guidance.
• Location – Try not to shoot in a classroom at your school. The classroom, no matter how you dress it up, looks like a classroom and can negatively impact the digital story you are trying to tell.
• Collaboration – We strongly recommend that students work in teams of 3-4: part of the educational value is around building collaborative skill sets. But students may work individually.

 

 

 

The Process

 

• Below is a suggested breakdown for the students’ work.

 

During Phase I student teams will:

• Select a seminal Supreme Court Case.
• Research the case…but this isn’t just any research assignment. There are, to start, two levels of thinking on which your team needs to embark.
• Level 1: Research and clearly outline the basic facts of the case, including the inciting incident; the process that the conflict went through to get to the Supreme Court (highlights only); the ramifications of the case’s two outcomes for the country; the decision itself; the ramifications for the country after the case closed. This is your basic story outline.
  • The research for this level should include primary and secondary sources.
• Level 2: Pick two or three key characters in the case, and research their stories. These characters do not have to be the biggest historical players in the case, so poke around a little. Fundamentally, you need to identify the beliefs or principles that brought these characters to defend their side of the case so passionately. And, if possible, how, in their own personal histories, they came to align themselves with these beliefs or principles. At the end of this, you have the main characters for your storyline.
  • Level 3: Brainstorm how you might want to tell this story: from the point of view of one side or the other, one character or another, or, both.
    • Teacher’s Option: Narrative Outline – Teachers may require that teams combine the three levels above in a two-page paper or detailed flow chart that succinctly outlines the key story elements and characters from start to finish of the case in question.

During Phase II student teams will:

• While there is no specific movie trailer formula that must be followed, there are a couple of considerations to help guide your story formatting.

• If you have access to Apple’s imovie, there is an imovie trailer template. While a team cannot use this template, you can study it as a model for how to design your movie trailer.
• Look at movie trailers for some of your favorite movies. Many are online at the movie’s website. As a team study them and take notes. How do the trailers set up the story? How much information do they give away and how much do they withhold? How do they end? Movie trailers are, among other things, exercises in pacing: what changes in pace do you notice from the trailer’s start to finish?
• Look at movie trailers for a selection of movies that you haven’t seen. Which ones leave you really wanting to see the movie? How did they accomplish that? In the end, pick the ones that you like the best; identify what you liked best about them and begin to create your own movie trailer template.
• Listen to this 6 minute NPR story from January, 2012, “The Art of the Modern Movie Trailer” http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/01/15/145227280/the-art-of-the-modern-movie-trailer

• Conduct Creative research – This assignment does not ask your team to create a move trailer about a Supreme Court case. It asks you to create a move trailer ‘based on’ a Supreme Court case. This gives you some creative license. This step asks your team to begin to imagine a few key scenes that you would need to include in your movie to tell your story. Identify those scenes and begin to brainstorm about what you think might have gone on in the room — bedroom, living room, office, court room, kitchen, taxi cab, bus, diner, screened in porch — of your main characters at key moments in your story.
• Decide on a movie trailer format, as based on the research process outlined above. Create a move trailer rundown that outlines the action and time for each scene.
  • The final movie trailer must reveal a substantive understanding of the Supreme Court case.
• Select your key scenes and draft the script. Keep in mind your shooting logistics when writing. In short, don’t write something you can’t shoot. A good rule of thumb here would be to keep the locations down to four in total; the main characters, four in total (except for the occasional crowd scene!); and the key props and costumes maxed out at twelve. These are relatively random numbers, but they are designed to be realistic and help you to write to what you can produce.
  • Teacher’s Option: First Draft Script – Teachers may require that teams hand in a first draft script for review and feedback.
• Finalize the entire move trailer rundown.
• Begin pre-production, which includes location scouting, casting, rehearsing, and preparing the logistics of the shoot day.
  • In pre-production, make the decision about the time period that you are setting up your movie. Is this taking place at the time of the decision and if so, what might be a few props or costumes that would indicate that? Or are you changing the time period, and presenting this story in the present day? What will that look like?

During Phase III, student teams will:

• Shoot the scenes.
• Create digital graphics as needed.
• Edit the video
• Post-produce the video, adding graphics, music and sound effects as desired.

 

Meridian Support Resources

Meridian Stories provides two forms of support for the student teams. 1.    Media Innovators and Artists – This is a series of three to four minute videos featuring artists and innovative professionals who offer important advice, specifically for Meridian Stories, in the areas of creativity and production. 2.    Meridian Tips – These are short documents that offer student teams a few key tips in the areas of creativity and production.   Recommended review, as a team, for this Challenge include:
Media Innovators and Artists	Meridian Resources
On Script Writing – Kent Pierce On Non-Fiction – Margaret Heffernan On Acting – Janet McTeer On the Importance of Character in Storytelling – Scott Nash On Editing – Tom Pierce	“Building Characters” “Creative Brainstorming Techniques” “Creating Storyboards, Framing a               Shot” “Video Editing”

 

Presentation of Learning

Meridian Stories is a proud partner of the non-profit Share Your Learning, which is spearheading the movement of over five million students to publicly share their work as a meaningful part of their educational experience.

The workforce considers Presentational Skills to be a key asset and we encourage you to allow students to practice this skill set as often as possible. These digital storytelling projects provide a great opportunity for kids to practice their public presentational skills. This can be achieved in a remote learning environment by inviting parents to a Zoom/Google/Skype screening of the student’s digital stories.

According to Share Your Learning, Presentations of Learning (POL) promote…

• Student Ownership, Responsibility & Engagement. POLs can serve as a powerful rite of passage at the end of [a project]. By reflecting on their growth over time in relation to academic and character goals, grounded in evidence from their work, students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning. Just as an artist wants their portfolio to represent their best work, POLs encourage students to care deeply about the work they will share.
• Community Pride & Involvement. When peers, teachers and community members come together to engage with student work and provide authentic feedback, they become invested in students’ growth and serve as active contributors to the school community.
• Equity. POLs ensure that all students are seen and provide insight into what learning experiences students find most meaningful and relevant to their lives.

Meridian Stories’ own research indicates this to be a really useful exercise for one additional reason:  Students actually learn from their peers’ presentations – it is useful to hear a perspective that is not just the teacher’s.

It is with this in mind that we you encourage you to plan an event – it could be just an end-of-the-week class or an event where parents, teachers and student peers are invited – to allow the students to showcase their Meridian Stories’ digital storytelling projects. For more free resources that will support this planning, visit Share Your Learning

 

 

 

Evaluation Rubric – Supreme Court Movie Trailer

CONTENT COMMAND
Criteria	1 – 10
Clarity of Content	The historical content is presented clearly and compellingly
Resonance of Content	The larger historical ramifications of the scene are clearly communicated
Historical Figures	The historical figures and their roles in this event are presented clearly and compellingly
STORYTELLING COMMAND
Criteria	1 – 10
Story	The narrative is clear, engaging and enticing
Character	The characters are engaging, entertaining and thoughtfully executed
MEDIA COMMAND
Criteria	1 – 10
Editing	The piece is edited cleanly and effectively, resulting in an
Acting and Cinematography	The acting and story visualization engage and entertain the viewer
Movie-Trailer Genre	The marriage of pacing and graphics to key story elements is dynamic and effective
Music	The selective use of music enhances the drama inherent in the trailer

HUMAN SKILLS COMMAND  (for teachers only)
Criteria	1 – 10
Collaborative Thinking	The group demonstrated flexibility in making compromises and valued the contributions of each group member
Creativity and Innovation	The group brainstormed many inventive ideas and was able to evaluate, refine, and implement them effectively
Initiative and Self-Direction	The group set attainable goals, worked independently, and managed their time effectively, demonstrating a disciplined commitment to the project

 

 

 

Essential Questions

1. What are some of the most important Supreme Court cases that have helped shape our current way of life?
2. What are the specific human and societal dynamics at play in the evolution and resolution of a single Supreme Court Case?
   1. Why are some Supreme Court Cases so formative in the evolution of the US?
3. How has information gathered from primary sources enhanced your understanding of the topic? How is the information from these sources different from the information gathered from secondary sources?
   1. How does one properly cite source material?
4. How does one research, select and organize content from a variety of sources in order to present a compelling, cohesive and historically accurate narrative?
5. By converting an iconic historical event into a narrative that humanizes the event, how has your understanding changed or deepened?
6. How has immersion in the production of digital media deepened the overall educational experience?
7. How has working on a team changed the learning experience?

Student Proficiencies

1. The student will be familiar with a range of seminal Supreme Court cases.
2. The student will have a substantive understanding of how individuals and societal politics shape the evolution and resolution of a select Supreme Court Case, and why these cases can re-direct the destiny of the US.
3. The student will understand how combining primary and secondary sources can help one to reach a more complex and nuanced understanding of history.
   1. The student will practice proper citation of source material.
4. The student will understand the processes involved in researching content from a variety of sources; selecting relevant information from those sources; and organizing this information in a way that yields narrative cohesion and historical accuracy.
5. The student will gain a new understanding of a key historical event by approaching it through the elements of narrative.
6. The student will know the basic constructs of using video media to effectively communicate character and a story.
7. The student will have an increased awareness of the challenges and rewards of team collaboration.

 

Curricular Correlations

The Supreme Court Movie Trailer Challenge addresses a range of curricular objectives that have been articulated by two nationally recognized sources:

1. The Common Core Curricular Standards – English Language Arts & History/Social Studies; and
2. The C3 Framework for Social Studies, as outlined by National Council of Social Studies (NCSS).

 

Below please find the standards that are addressed, either in whole or in part.

Core Curricular Standards – English Language Arts Standards

Standard	8th	9th/10th	11th/12th
W2   WRITING   Text Types and Purposes	Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.	Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.	Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
W3   WRITING   Text Types and Purposes	Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.	Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.	Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
SL1   SPEAKING AND LISTENING   Comprehension and Collaboration	Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher- led) with diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.	Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.	Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one- on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11–12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
SL5   SPEAKING AND LISTENING   Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas	Integrate multimedia and visual displays into presentations to clarify information, strengthen claims and evidence, and add interest.	Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.	Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
L3   LANGUAGE   Knowledge of Language	Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.	Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.	Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
RH2   HISTORY/SOCIAL STUDIES   Key Ideas and Details	Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.	Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.	Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
RH9   HISTORY/SOCIAL STUDIES   Integration of Knowledge and Ideas	Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.	Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.	Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

C3 Framework for Civics

D2.Civ.10.3-5. Identify the beliefs, experiences, perspec- tives, and values that underlie their own and others’ points of view about civic issues.	D2.Civ.10.6-8. Explain the relevance of personal interests and perspectives, civic virtues, and democratic principles when people ad- dress issues and problems in government and civil society.	D2.Civ.10.9-12. Analyze the impact and the appropriate roles of personal interests and perspectives on the applica- tion of civic virtues, democrat- ic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights.
D2.Civ.11.3-5. Compare procedures for making deci- sions in a variety of settings, including classroom, school, government, and/or society.	D2.Civ.11.6-8. Differentiate among procedures for mak- ing decisions in the class- room, school, civil society, and local, state, and national government in terms of how civic purposes are intended.	D2.Civ.11.9-12. Evaluate multiple procedures for mak- ing governmental decisions at the local, state, national, and international levels in terms of the civic purposes achieved.
D2.Civ.14.3-5. Illustrate historical and contemporary means of changing society.	D2.Civ.14.6-8. Compare historical and contemporary means of changing societies, and promoting the common good.	D2.Civ.14.9-12. Analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of chang- ing societies, promoting the common good, and protect- ing rights.

C3 Framework for History

D2.His.1.3-5. Create and use a chronological sequence of related events to compare developments that happened at the same time.	D2.His.1.6-8. Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.	D2.His.1.9-12. Evaluate how historical events and devel- opments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
Begins in grades 6–8	D2.His.15.6-8. Evaluate the relative influence of various causes of events and devel- opments in the past.	D2.His.15.9-12. Distinguish between long-term caus- es and triggering events in developing a historical argument.