You could choose one of these themes as a starting point:

• What it’s like to live in Scotland
• Our language
• Arts and culture
• Things you collect
• Create a news report on current events
• Anything that you are interested in

There are so many different ways to tell stories – it’s up to you to choose the best way to tell it to us. Remember, a short film doesn’t have to be realistic and we encourage you to be really inventive.

Your short film should be new and original – this is a chance for you to develop an exciting piece of creative work. Here are some of the ways that you can tell stories in a creative way:

• Spoken word – e.g. traditional oral stories, a rap, or a poem
• Written words – e.g. fiction, non-fiction, scriptwriting
• Languages – e.g. sign language, Scots, Doric, Gaelic, Punjabi, Polish…
• Physical languages – drama, dance or mime
• Visual language – e.g. comics, storyboards, art-work, stop-motion animation or photos
• Music and sound – e.g. composing the story of the sea or recording the sound of your street

We’re really excited about story. Storytelling is full of adventure. We live in a world that is filled with amazing stories and we interact with them every single day.

Maybe you told someone what you watched last night on YouTube, or perhaps you shared the story of how you learned how to play a new song…or maybe you walked past a boarded-up building and your imagination told you what was inside. Perhaps when you were learning about new things you listened to the story of how vaccines were invented, or maybe you shared something that has been troubling you with a friend.

Stories come in all shapes and sizes and they help us to understand the world around us. Stories are the main way that humans communicate ideas and they really help us to understand concepts, big and small.

• Listening – a good story will get us hooked in and wanting to know more
• Communication – by practising, and being inventive, we get better and better at telling stories in a whole variety of ways
• Imagination – it isn’t surprising that the most successful inventors have really active imaginations
• Language – language comes in all shapes and sizes – your language might be spoken, physical, creative (e.g. dance, art, music) or even scientific
• Our knowledge and understanding of the world
• An understanding of difficult ideas or situations
• An understanding of the place we live and the cultures around us

1. Choose your theme
2. Choose the way you want to tell your story (e.g. dance or photo collage set to music)
3. Develop your material
4. Rehearse
5. Follow the instructions in our resource pack to help you make the film