Film Academy

One evening a few months ago I helped edit a music video for someone, we managed a first rough cut and everyone was really pleased with the result. We agreed to finish it when he had some free time in his diary, but in the mean time he asked if I would like to help out on a Film Academy for kids, explaining that it was a 3 week module that was part of a much bigger design academy covering everything from interiors to t-shirt design.

Without thinking, I said yes because I loved the idea.

When the first Saturday session came around, I was a little nervous, as I didn't know what to expect, I had never formally taught kids anything and I was already imagining some of the more disruptive characters from Waterloo Road making up the large percentage of the class populous. Instead, what I got was some incredibly talented and creative youngsters, most of which were excited by the idea of making a film and already had loads of ideas of what they wanted to do. Now the pressure shifted from getting them engaged to gaining their respect by meeting their expectations!

Aggghh, suddenly I felt a little under-prepared. But I soon found my feet again when we started working on storyboards. It was really interesting to see how differently people tackled the same problem. Some people worked together, some people worked individually within a group, some drew mini works of art and some worked with basic outlines, some people did it all in their head whilst they surfed Facebook. The really great thing was the different ideas, the originality and the different mediums people had chosen to work in from stop motion claymation to a ghost story short film.

The following Saturday was all about filming from their storyboards, this is something that everyone seemed to take to. They used a variety of equipment from a Nikon D90 to Flip Cameras and Smart Phones. The iPod and iPhone were able to take some great photos and their user interface made them perfect for stop motion capture. This meant that you don't need to buy expensive equipment to produce a great little short film.  Some of the students were getting more experimental, one group decided to do a whole film of different sounds from around the location. Another, added some special effects to create a sofa with a taste for humans and another group created a ghost story.

In the final week, all the groups edited their work using Apple's i-Movie.  Some were more proficient than others, but it was surprising to see that even i-Movie virgins were picking up some of the advanced controls within ten minutes.  In the edit, things really started to pull together, and you could really see the fruition of the hard work and creativity in the previous weeks, but this is also where some holes started to appear, but hopefully this just reinforced the importance of planning.

Overall, this was a great experience for me, the aim of the course was to show the students just how easy and accessible it is to make a movie and by the end I felt that I had learnt that lesson too and I was itching to get my hands on some playdoh to make a little animated short.  In the end I settled for interviewing the some of the students about their experiences - video to follow.

Photos Here >