If you want to make a human sign at school, three quarters of the work is already done. The most difficult thing about a human sign is advertising, generating the enthusiasm and getting the people there. To do a human sign in school hours means that you have a captive crowd on site with built in enthusiasm, in a safe monitored environment. All that remains is to decide what you are going to say, a group of helpers to spend 3 hours approx marking out the sign, approval from your principal, and a non political message.
You probably need at least 50 people per letter, so you should be able to work out how many letters you will be able to make for your word(s). 50 people standing in single file close together can make a very readable letter that is about 10 m high and 4 m wide. A gap of about 2m between each letter looks pretty good, and a gap of 10m between words is very readable. My advice would be to use block upper case letters and as the plane is taking its footage make the people, who are able too, crouch down for a more defined letter (this is especially important if you are located in tricky spots like the cross bar of an ‘A’). The smaller groups will have to use their ingenuity, one for example is providing an exclamation mark for its contribution as it has only 15 people total.
How to mark out the sign?
The first thing to do is to have a plan or map of the word(s) to spell out. Have all the dimensions carefully marked out. When you draw it to scale, you will get a pretty good idea of what it will look like from the air. The obvious place for a school sign would be on the school oval, or the closest safe open area available to the school.
In marking out the letters, the first thing to do is mark out the parallel tram tracks which can be done using a string line. If your letters are 10m high, make 2 parallel string lines on the oval 10 m apart. Then work out the centre point, and then mark out the letters, moving from the centre outwards. This will ensure that your sign is square and central within the oval. The easiest way to mark out the sign is with spray paint, the type builders use to mark out trenches etc (you use the can upside down). Dots of spray paint reasonably close together would not interfere with sports games the following weekend, and you will find that the paint will be gone in a few days or after the next mowing. The alternative is to use flour or a lime marker, this also disappears in a day or 2, but is more difficult and time consuming to apply.
How to get people evenly spread throughout the sign?
You don’t want some letters thicker than others. Divide up the group population by the number of letters and this will give you an idea about how many students per letter. I would say that the best way for a school to form a sign would be to simply start at one end, and when each letter is tightly filled in single file, move onto the next letter. When you get to the end, you can distribute the remaining students into the sparser areas. Alternatively, you could assign different letters to different classes.
How to photograph the sign?
The only way to do this is from the air. The plane needs to have a high wing (ie a Cessna) and preferably fly with the door off, as this makes photography much easier. I would recommend both a still and video photographer, and the video camera should be broadcast quality (3 chip) so the sign can get on the TV. The camera needs to be high quality digital so the shot can get into the papers. The key with the photo (particularly if multiple signs are going to be pasted together to form a sentence) is to get the shot square, and from as close to directly above as possible. If multiple signs are being photographed, they should all be imaged (shot) from the same altitude. This is all relatively easy to organise, but CEFE can certainly help out if need be.
With multiple signs in a particular region, the cost of the plane could be shared between the schools involved. I would imagine that to film 4 schools from the air would cost about $300. That’s less than $100 per school. I am sure that a coin donation from the students involved would cover this cost. Check with us and other schools in the area to find out who is participating, co-ordinating exact times for the aerial shots is critical, you do not want to have your students waiting for too long.
Remember to video and photograph your sign taking shape from the ground, we have learnt that recording these signs provides a great source of footage for future use. You may decide as a school to put together a DVD of the event, I have watched dozens of times the DVD’s CEFE produced and still find myself looking for my kids and discovering people I did not know were involved.
It would be good to alert the media as soon as you have decided to participate, a short press release emailed and a few follow up phone calls has worked well for us. You never know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ABC or other sent down their helicopter for the day. I would get onto Canberra times, Sydney Morning Herald, Illawarra Mercury, The Age, Win TV, etc and all the local papers.
One final piece of advice. Someone will always be critical of the sign being filmed from the air ( as planes produce CO2). The way to pre-empt that criticism is to ‘offset’ the carbon emissions (CO2) for the flight. That is fairly easy to do. For 4 schools, a Cessna will burn approximately 40 litres of aviation fuel. There are several web sites that will be able to tell you how many trees need to be planted to offset the CO2 from the flight. It would probably amount to 1 or 2 trees being planted. Too easy. I would plant the tree(s) before the flight, and you then negate any potential criticism. The alternative is to pay for the offset in dollars, this would equate roughly to no more than $50 per flight max.
This is a great opportunity, will be good fun, will require a fair amount of work on the day, and will be a powerful statement. This will generate tens of thousands of discussions about climate change, and when people get talking, solutions start appearing. Your students will be proud to participate and add their voice to the growing concern for climate change.
Good luck!!
