Hello, my name is Dasha. I’m a participant here in MMC, and it is wonderful here! Today we had our second day of filming a movie. The main characters of our film are Stargazers (in particular, Nomi, Silvana and Olga). It was very fun to shoot the part about the disagreement. My friends kept forgetting their parts and phrases. Also there was a fun part where we had to show that another main character: the camper who got the Wish Note ate all of the dumplings by stealing other people’s ones. That was amazing!
In the morning we had our normal lessons: English where we’ve been writing our pre-tests, Workshop where we made survival bracelets (that was very interesting), Squad time and Sport. Sometimes we had to interrupt our lessons to continue filming. My friends and I who played Stargazers had to film in black robes on a hot day under the sun while others swam in a swimming pool! At the end we only got 8 minutes of swimming time instead of 40!
In the evening we had out Oscar Ceremony. We watched everybody’s films and their interviews. Our’s was so fun to watch. And I want to say a big thank you to our counselors Arina and Varya for a perfect montage that they had done in such a short amount of time. Thank you!
Rudovskaya Daria, 12,Kostroma
РУБРИКА ПЕДАГОГА
Hello, my name is Arina and I’m the counselor of the Yellow Squad. First, I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m 22 and this year I graduated from Higher School of Economics with bachelors in IT. Like most of the staff members on this session, at first I came here as a child, and now I am here again in the role of a counselor. Moreover, at the beginning of the session, I asked the guys from our squad who were here for the first time. Of the 15 people, only three had not been to the MMC before. There is a simple explanation for this — you want to return to the MMC regardless of age.
Of course, this is an educational camp that provides a unique opportunity to learn English with native speakers, moreover, in an informal setting, and not in a stuffy classroom. It also gives you a unique opportunity to try something new and unusual, which otherwise you would never even think about. Where else can you become a member of a circus troupe for the evening or try yourself as a cameraman and film editor.
However, the open and welcoming atmosphere of the MMC is what really makes everyone who has ever been here truly fall in love with this place, and makes them come back here again and again. I always felt accepted and included here even in adolescence when it seems that the whole world is against you. So as a counselor I try my very best to maintain this warm feeling.
Today we had our Oscar Ceremony. For two days we’ve been shooting our movies and in the evening every squad showed the end result. Our squad got the fantasy genre with the obligatory participation of our English teachers or as we call them stargazers. When we first discussed the ideas for the plot I was a bit sceptical to be honest because I always thought about some fantasy world and mystical creatures when someone said fantasy meanwhile children all rooted for a rather realistic setting with just a few magical tweaks. I learned a lot from our “youngest” campers. As it turned out they proposed something that is called a low fantasy. It is a fantasy subgenre in which unrealistic events happen in an otherwise-normal world. For instance, our plot revolves around the magical notebook that fulfills wishes written in it, however, the action itself takes place in our normal non-magical camp.
Kids were really enthusiastic about filming our movie especially because they came up with the idea and wrote the script themselves. We as a squad had a lot of fun today and the end result, despite some difficulties with the editing, was rather spectacular. This, in my opinion, also applies to the films of other squads, so I hope that you will enjoy watching them as much as we did!