commercial breaks: involving kids in creating multimedia adverts for museum objects

We drew up a storyboard to illustrate the various scenes in our advert, and invited our younger visitors to design a superhero for us.

We had many great designs...

Andrew	Joseph	Katie

Kieran	Louisa	Rhian

Charlotte	Mairi

	...but we decided we liked Mairi's best.

How We Made The Advert

Because Smith's Oatflakes were milled in Midcalder in watermills
powered by the River Almond we decided to invent a story about a child who turns into a superhero with "ALMOND POWER!" when they eat porridge made from Smith's Oatflakes.

We thought it would be fun to turn one of our visitors into our superhero- Almondboy! Liam volunteered and was photographed pretending to eat porridge and striking a superhero style pose. We completed his transformation using the computer.

Liam, or is it Almondboy?

	Craig and Lisa, voiceover experts.
Various children provided the words and special effects for this advert. Kieran (8), Craig (7), Lisa(7), Charlotte, Andrew, Joseph, and Christine all helped us with the voiceovers. To add some more atmosphere we composed a piece of dramatic music using the keyboard.

SMITH'S OATFLAKES
Smith's Edinburgh Cream Oatflakes were milled in Midcalder in watermills powered by the River Almond. Producing these oatflakes for your breakfast was a long process. Here's a rundown of the steps needed to create your morning porridge.

1.	Sow your oats in winter or spring. Oats do well in damp, moist conditions so hope for rain!
2.	Harvest your oats when the crop is ripe. Before harvesting machines were invented people used to mow the oat crop with a scythe, cutting it just above ground level.
3.	Tie your oats in bundles called sheaves, "stook" (stand) the sheaves together in your fields to allow the oats to dry and fully ripen.
4.	Bring your sheaves to a barn and "thresh" them, this involves hitting the sheaves sharply with a flail or long stick to separate the oat grains from the stalks. Sweep the barn floor to collect your oat grains (along with "chaff " - short bits of straw, dirt, stones and weed seeds….).
5.	Separate your oat grains from the chaff by the process known as "winnowing". There are a number of ways to do this, you can toss the threshed grain up into the air again and again, letting the wind blow away the lighter chaff from the heavier grain. Alternatively you can sieve the mixture to separate the grain from the chaff.
6.	Now thoroughly dry your oats in a kiln. Spread your oats all over the drying floor and light a peat fire underneath it. The heat will rise up through the floor and dry out your oats. Kilning is what gives oatflakes their distinctive flavour.
7.	Now grind your oats in the watermill. The turning of the water wheel drives the millstones round and round through a system of cogs, wheels and pulleys, crushing your oat grains into oatflakes.
8.	Bag up your oatflakes and go home to make your porridge. Here's a recipe from 1884.

Scotch Porridge - FOR FOUR PERSONS.
Boil three pints of water in a clean saucepan, add a teaspoonful of salt; when the water is boiling, mix in one pound of fine oatmeal; while you put in the oatmeal stir constantly with a round stick about eighteen inches long called a "spurtle". Continue stirring for fifteen minutes, then pour into soup plates, allow it to cool a little, and serve with sweet milk. Scotch porridge is one of the most nutritive diets that can be given, especially for young persons on account of the bone-producing elements contained in oatmeal. It is sometimes boiled with milk instead of water, but the mixture is then rather rich for delicate stomachs. (Adapted from Enquire Within Upon Everything, Houlston and Sons, London, 1884).

Oatflakes are an important part of the traditional Scottish diet and an essential ingredient in Oatcakes, Bannocks, Cranachan, Atholl Brose and Haggis. It can also be used as a cleansing facial scrub!