Vlad Dye, the Science Guy

7 Vlad Dye, the Science Guy Our teacher announced that our class would split into groups and each group would make a video about the use of dye, a substance used to colour various materials. The following week, each group would bring its video to a class of Grade 5 children and let them choose which one they liked most. After a hot group discussion, our group agreed that Vlad would be our actor. I took the job of cameraman, and Adam was in charge of post-production. How was the movie going to be made? We each had an idea, but we finally decided to make a comedy movie with a game show in the middle of the film. The name of our movie was Vlad Dye, the Science Guy. After preparing everything -the scripts, the camera, and the scenes-we started filming. It was much more difficult than we had anticipated. Vlad found it impossible to memorize the whole script and I found it extremely difficult to keep a steady hand for an entire scene. Adam admitted that it wasn't easy to create a game. Vlad constantly forgot the words, and my hands shook uncontrollably. We didn't have a single complete scene after a full day of hard work.

The next day, I came up with an idea. I printed all the scripts in large fonts and stuck them right above the camera. That way, Vlad could simply read the script rather than memorizing it. I started using a chair to steady my wobbly hands. We filmed scenes in the house, in the school and in a vegetable market where we explained that red dyes used to come from red onions. We filmed Adam's game show in just one attempt! The following week, our class presented ten films to the Grade 5 class. There were all kinds of movies from students acting as professors to students dying their hair five different colours. But it was our film that took the spotlight. Adam's game show of Vlad choosing the safe drink from a batch of poisoned dyes made everybody laugh until they cried.