April Fool’s News is humorous adventure in critical viewing that incorporates filming, scripted acting, improv, and both constructing and deconstructing a “news piece” slotted to “air” on the first of April. Participants take on one or more roles while bringing one producer’s “great idea” to do something “funny to the news“ to fruition. This program uses flexible scripts and flexible roles to accommodate varying group sizes. April Fool’s News was inspired (in part) by Parker & Moore’s college-level textbook entitled Critical Thinking, and talking points (argument from outrage, loaded questions, emotive force of words, etc) revolve around concepts found in Chapters 4, 5, and 6. We are eager to further develop this course centered aroud Media Literacy, Critical Thinking, Critical Viewing, and Visual Literacy. Clips from our test run are below.

Sample Videos

This is the production team’s “great” idea for the April 1 news:

This clip represents the “actual” events:

This clip represents the “edited” footage:

This is the “actual interview” with Louie:

This is the “edited version” of Louie’s interview:

This is the “real” interview with Chad:

This is the “edited” interview with Chad: