The film photo challenge energizing activity is a simple, ice-breaking and team building activity. In it, small teams try and think of an iconic image from a well known film that they can replicate using just themselves and the material around them. They then pose as that image and take a picture of themselves. Later, others then try to guess the film.
Summary by The World of Work Project
The Film Photo Challenge Energizing Activity
This energizer activity is good for longer events where people are in tables. It can work well for large groups, which could consist of up to 200 people spread across 20 groups or tables. The activity simply requires each table to take a picture of themselves reenacting a famous scene from a film. Then they share the pictures and other teams need to guess the film.
The Activity
The facilitator starts the activity by explaining the rules to the room. Each table or working group will be give 10 minutes to think of a well know scene from a film that they can reenact using just themselves and any materials or props that they can find in the room. Once the 10 minutes are up, everyone will be given a further 10 minutes to prepare, pose and capture their replica image of a famous scene.
The teams then all email their pictures to the facilitator or host for the day, who can either load them onto a computer slide show to share with the room later, or who can print them out as quiz sheets for the teams.
If they are used to create a slide show, the facilitator will subsequently share each image with the room and ask people to shout out if they know the film. If they are printed in quiz sheets, each table will try and guess which film each picture relates to. The team that guesses the highest number of pictures correctly wins a prize, and the team whose picture was guessed correctly most times also wins a prize.
Learning More
Team building and ice-breaking activities are very important. They help build trust in teams and help progress team maturity. They can also reduce the risks of social threat and improve interpersonal awareness.
Being able to deliver them is a helpful facilitation and meeting skill. A few specific activities we’ve written about include: Human Rock, Paper Scissors, the Film Photo Challenge, the Map Game, Circle of Memory and the Questions Cocktail Party.
Laughter and play are also great ways to help build a team. You can learn more about how playfulness helps teams in our podcast on the subject:
The World of Work Project View
This is a nice activity that helps small members of a table get to know each other. It can bring some good humor to events which can help form teams quickly. It’s very useful for events or activities where groups will work together over the course of a day or longer.
From a facilitator perspective, this activity can work well because most of the work is done by the participants, not the facilitator. Once the pictures have been taken and shared with the facilitator, then some work is required, but the facilitator can choose how much they want to do.
As with most events like this, you need to assess the participants before using this activity. Some groups will really enjoy it, some will enjoy it less.
