We are in the home stretch. Many of you have already uploaded your video or sent in a physical copy. If you haven’t, there’s still time!
This week I have another “how to” site to feature. Its audience is teachers, but the information is equally useful to student filmmakers in 4th grade and above. Scholastic’s “Teacher’s Guide to Making Student Movies” has movie examples (Real Player needed) and pages devoted to the process of filmmaking. One of the strengths of the site is that it breaks down this process into manageable chunks. Making movies can appear to be overwhelming, but this site helps overcome this fear. Check it out!
I’ve come across another good moviemaking website that I want to share: the BBC’s “Me and My Movie.” Whereas Kids’ Vid is fairly basic in its presentation of information, Me and My Movie uses loads of Flash animation and video to make its points. A slow internet connection will make the experience of visiting this website frustrating. I started with the HOW TO section. There you will view mini-tutorials on the importance of story and planning, camera shots, editing and more. You can even download a How To guide with some basic advice on how to make a video. Ignore the stuff about uploading your video to the site, unless that interests you. Check it out!
Today, my audience for this posting is film teachers or any other teachers interested in teaching through film. Checking my RSS feeds this morning, I came across a new posting on Edutopia. Created by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, this site showcases best practices in 21st century teaching and learning. Often the postings and articles found on Edutopia have a technology focus, as does today’s. Film director Martin Scorsese established The Film Foundation whose mission includes educational outreach. The Foundation created “The Story of Movies” visual literacy curriculum which teaches students how to look critically at films. Who knows?: watching the classic films may inspire one of your students to become the next Scorsese, and S2F2 is one step in their journey.
First of all, I need to write that I am dual platform guy: I use both Windows and Mac OS. With that written, I must say that Apple’s iMovie has for many years been one of the top video editing applications at the consumer level. Should you have access to a Mac, it would be a great tool on which to create your masterpiece for S2F2.
Today, I want to share with you a website to get you up and running with iMovie ‘09. Apple has developed a series of short videos for its “Find Out How” site. There, you can view tutorials on every major feature in iMovie and how it can transform your video. If you need to learn or review iMovie, this is a fantastic place to start: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/.
This is an exciting time! With the Shanghai Student Film Festival just a little less than three months away (and the deadline to submit work, two months out), aspiring students are brainstorming concepts, storyboarding, filming and editing their productions.
My name is Paul Witzel, and I am the Technology Integration Specialist at the Shanghai Community International School, Lower School, Pudong campus. I work with students, ages 2 to 11, and their teachers. One of the pleasures of my week is working with elementary-level filmmakers and animators. They all have great ideas but need a little help with some of the basics of filmmaking. Each week until the festival, I will be posting an entry to the S2F2 blog. I will explore the skills new filmmakers may want to develop and offer some resource suggestions. My intended audience is both student filmmakers and their teachers and parents. I hope you find the entries useful.
This week I want to share a site that speaks effectively to young filmmakers. Making a video is a process, with lots of steps along the way. Kids’ Vid outlines this process, providing examples and helpful information. I use it during the first few sessions of my filmmaking club. Don’t get overwhelmed by all of the material! Read and understand it a section at a time, and soon you’ll have some essential knowledge and tools in your toolbox.
Hello Film Nerds!
I recently discovered a great little website in which you might be interested, called, “The Art of the Title Sequence”. Basically, they break down some of those nifty title sequences you see in movies to see how they’re made. Highly recommended, especially the section on steadicam, continuous shots. Check it out!
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