Introduction

Following on from the success of Broadcast Engineering and Maths, Bob Usher (LGfL Content Manager) and Grahame Smart (Maths AST Teacher) wanted to create a new resource that highlighted the realities of how mathematical understanding is vital to everyday life.

Developing the idea of exploring the maths behind an outbreak of a biological virus eventually turned into a large scale undertaking, involving:

• A London Secondary School as the main location for filming
• The Metropolitan Police helping to create the sense of realism within the news reports created
• Green screen studio technology to help create the illusion of a TV studio and live news broadcast

Although there are a number of existing resources available for schools centring on the theme of contagion rates, we weren't aware of a resource that featured filmed recreations of the impact of such an outbreak.

Piloting

The project underwent several stages of development:

Phase 1 - Developing the idea

Brainstorming ideas about the scope and scale of the project required consideration of many ideas including:

• What should the focus of the resource be?
• Where the news reports would be filmed?
• What is the maths that can be covered?
• How do you create a resource that will work in the context of the secondary school curriculum?

Phase 2 – Testing the curriculum material

Although one of the key aspects of Viral Contagion is the fictitious news report scenarios, Grahame Smart taught the curriculum material to test its impact and curriculum relevance. He was able to do that by merely enacting the news reporter role in class in front of students.

News reports

Phase 3 – Filming the news reports

Forest Hill Boys School is used as the scene of the outbreak, although using different camera angles and positions, it acts as the backdrop for all the locations in the filmed news reports. Nadine Montague-Gibson (Head of Drama – Forest Hill Boys School) co-ordinated the students that were to appear in the news reports and applied the gruesome make up to show the impact of the infection.

The news anchor role is played by Carys Bagwell, a member of the LGfL customer support team. The studio scenes were filmed in the LGfL offices using green screen technology with computer graphics which were overlaid subsequently within Final Cut Pro, Motion software and After Effects.

Carys excelled at acting out the role of an increasingly stressed news reader trying to cope with the demands of live news broadcasting, whilst watching her reporter colleague become ever more exposed to the danger about which he was reporting. Careful consideration was given as to how to edit the news reports so that they felt realistic and kept to the conventions of this style of news reporting.

Completion

Phase 4 – Completing the resource

Post production effects on the news reports required careful and complex video editing. Concern was expressed by the LGfL Editorial Board about the delicate balance between making the news reports appear as real as possible – without being confused with an actual outbreak of a virus in real life.

A suitable website design was created by the web team at Atomwide that took the key themes and imagery from the filming.

If you found the Viral Contagion resource useful and would like to see more of this kind of resource from LGfL – please complete the feedback form and let us know what you think!