Congradulations Makyla!

Off to Chicago

Wow, wow and wow! A huge tip of the hat to Makyla, her film “Flowers and Love” which she made during our spring class was selected to screen at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival Often reffered to as the “Cannes for Kids” this festival is the most prestigious fest in the US for kid work with adult and youth filmmakers comming from around the world, and is the only kid festival which is a qualifier for the Academy Awards.  Makyla combined live film with still 35mm images editing in Final Cut Pro and composing and playing the piano for the piece.  She and her family will head out for the festival in late October and be particpating in workshops and other events.  “Flowers and Love”  will be screened next in Portland as a part of tiny tba, a children’s component of the TBA festival.

Letter to the editors

Nice work last week team, it was great to see you all cutting film old school style. It was certainly a break from editing on the computer. After each of us spent about an hour on the film strips we ended up with just a few short sections of final film, imagine the time which goes into creating a full feature film that way. If you liked this workshop you should check out the films of Stan Brackage. He’s considered the father of experimental film making and believed that the film itself, and not the images projected were the real canvasses for a filmmaker. In his most famous film, Mothlight, he taped down wings of moths and grass to clear film stock and made a print for projection. Here’s a youtube link, though not a very good one, if you like his stuff you should rent a better copy from Movie Madness or Netflix.

Squish Rocks PNCA

Well, a HUGE THANKS to Squish for sitting in our class last week and helping with our audio lesson. It was great fun and very inspiring for me to see professional kid musicians working with young filmmakers, I’m very excited to see what comes from this collaborative work. If you’d like to see more from Squish, you can check out their myspace page here… It certainly made my day to hear Squish cover Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” for a film Alex and Aaron are working on. I’m glad you all had an opportunity to create your own music tracks too. Garageband, and other software programs like it, are great tools for creating soundtracks, but it’s important to see that the music had to come from somewhere in the 1st place, and to get a hands on understanding of how the recording process takes place. I also wanted to thank Karl Hugo for bringing in his instruments and helping out with the workshop and Nicole for bringing in her clarinet. More photos from the session are posted on our flickr pool here

Gross me out!

Homework for this week, messy fun! Try out of few of these, but let your folks know ahead of time, especially if you’re going for something gooey and make sure you’ve got lots of paper towels, wet rags and possibly cold cream near by to clean up with… Your assignment… Stage make-up!

Included here are a couple links to fake blood, age effects, costume and wig ideas and how to wound yourself without actually getting hurt. My first favorite suggestions come from, strangely enough, the Boy Scouts of America they spend a great deal of time showing each other how to treat a possible emergency, and some clever scout thought that making these demonstrations realistic might add to the presentation. Regardless, they’ve got some very resourceful tips. Included here are some nice effects using things you might have around the house. You’ll need to scroll down the link on the page a bit, but here are make-up tips, which you can eat, though they sound gross, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Here is a site based on the Lord of the Rings Movies, they have lots of great ideas on making costumes and wigs, some are pretty technical, others you could do without too much effort. This site was built by students and they had some nice wound tips… In the highly gross category was zombie makeup, but it might be handy come Halloween.

Again, check with your parents 1st, these effects are messy, make sure you try these experiments outside or somewhere easy to clean up… here’s a site for fake blood. And finally, a site which had a TON of ideas for make-up and costumes and some things that we’re too scary, but just fun.

If you’ve got time next week try out one of these effects and take a picture, or come back to class with a make-up trick to share or demonstrate… can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Xerox Project

Wow, team, way to go! You all came up with some fantastic reinterpretations of your own images, nice work! I hope you got something out of this exorcise, we did it for a few reasons… First, I wanted to let you know it’s possible to actually make a movie without using a camera, well, almost. By inserting multiple images of yourself into the same picture, you’ve managed to bend time a bit and in someways be in the same space, at the same moment, over and over, and you’ve done the amazing- you’ve documented it. You’ve also played a bit with deconstruction, a phenomenon you’ll hear over and over (hopefully) as you continue your studies in the arts. I’ve added some of your images here and on our flickr pool. A couple of you made wonderful LARGE pictures (Molly!) and they don’t fit on my scanner, so I’ll include them as soon as I can photograph them.

SOLD OUT

Wow, just got back from the Hollywood Theater, both Raiders screenings today are sold out!  They hope to bring the film back around this fall.  A huge apology to anyone else who tried to get tickets today.

A huge pat on the back to you all for some great work today!  I’ll be posting some clips here in the next few days.  It was great to see you all jump in and start editing.

Epic Kids

Wow, if you can get to the movies today, here is a must see.  In 1981 three twelve year old boys decided to re-shoot “Raiders of the Lost Ark”  shot for shot.  It took them seven years to make the film and the story behind the making of the movie is amazing.  Mike Russell wrote about it in Thursday’s Oregonian.  The filmmakers are all grown up now and on tour with the movie.  There is a FREE question and answer session this afternoon at the Hollywood Theater and they’re encouraging kid filmmakers to attend.  There are two screenings of the movie today, one at 3:30 and the other at 7pm.  Should be pretty darn cool to see what kids can do when they set their minds, and cameras to it. Here’s more info and tickets…

Our work so far

It may look like one of you is sleeping on the job, not so! What we see here is a dynamic example of a well framed shot! Nice action, great camera setting, one picture can tell a whole story, or at least beg a couple questions. So the class has gotten off to a great start, thanks for all the hard work on Saturday.

This next week we’ll be looking at how the camera works and shooting short film clips. We’ll be working on our story boards and scripts as well, so come with some ideas! We’ll have an in class guest, Aaron Douglas a documentary filmmaker who lives here in Portland. He’ll tell us a bit about how he comes up with story ideas and how a film can come together.  Ask him LOTS of questions, we’ll see if he had his coffee before he came in!  Here’s a clip from a film Aaron produced called “Monster Camp”.

Class One- April 12th

Hi all, welcome to the class and the blog. You’re invited to leave comments here and if your parents have signed the permission slip, you’ll have administration privileges beginning next week where you can add your own posts, links and films. This class is an overview of a huge subject one which is deeply rooted in fine art, modified by technology and mostly used for entertainment. You’ll get an introduction to digital tools, cameras, film vocabulary(an example is here), media literacy, and the creation and distribution of films. Some of you will finish the class with a completed film, some may not, and that is OK. It is our hope that you enjoy the process and utilize film as one of many outlets for an artist.

We’ll have two in class activities today, a photo exploration of framing and an exercise in deconstruction and photo montage. Check back during the week to see prime examples of your hard work. We’ll post photos on flickr with a stream running here. If you’ve the time and inclination, you’re invited to comment on these photos and add tags.