BHEF and The STAR Education Resource Station Present
STEP-UP
Multi-Media Production Summer Steam Academy 2013
It's the end of Day 3 and we have our website up and running, woohoo!
These days fly by so quickly , they are jam packed with workshops, tutorials, and of course, film-making!
Every morning we start off with 30 minutes of warm up and improv in the Salter Family Theater, it has a wonderful circular stage that's perfect for our small group.
In just three days, our eleven students are forming a film-making community that are becoming more and more comfortable with being very silly in front of each other in the mornings.
It's not just silliness though! Every warm up has a purpose, be that displaying the art of story- telling, or learning to reign in your focus, or getting comfortable with putting your ideas forward.
From our morning warm up, we move into The Editing Suite (that's room 252, Mr Rusts's art studio to all the students at Beverly Hills High) for the days' workshops.
DAY 1 started with a screening of The Red Balloon, a beautifully shot and very charming tale of a young French boy who develops a unique friendship with a large red balloon, followed by an analytical discussion of the film's components: story, characters, conflict, cinematography etc...
Well rounded characters are an essential part of a story. Film makers need to be able to make their audience empathise with their characters to hold their attention. With this in mind, the students received a phototgraph of a stranger an used that for inspiration to put themselves in the mind of that person, and write a monologue from his/her perspective.
From there we went into the importance of movie trailers in today's industry, and the students made their own trailer.
DAY 2
This was a really focused day. After our morning stint in the theater, our lead instructor Shanee delved into the details of what we need for successful story lines, and the technical structure of writing a screenplay. She used the children's classic, The Wizard of OZ, to illustrate the typical journey of a film's protagonist, pointing out the different elements along the way.
Alex and Greg then led the students through broadening characters and establishing them in a scenario that could be the basis for a movie plot. This was done individually or in pairs, and the students later made their movie 'pitch' to the rest of the group. So by half way through day 2 our mini film makers had already come up with story lines for 2 different screen plays!
In the afternoon Lynn, our animation expert, showed everyone an example of a short film made with stop motion animation, explaining how to make stop motion films using an iPad. We split the students into three camera crews, and the rest of the afternoon was spent outdoors filming stop motion shorts. We viewed the results this morning and they are both impressive and hilarious! Actually , don't tell teacher Greg I said this, but what was really hilarious was watching him getting completely out of breath running back and forth to move a prop five inches at a time in one of the group's short films. You'll understand completely when you see it at the screening next Friday!
DAY 3
Alright play time's over!! Today we form production companies and the hard work starts. (It's okay, I promise everyone's still having fun.)
So we started by splitting the students into two companies. So we have Dream House Studios, and Nova Productions. Within the companies everyone decided whether they wanted to be predominantly behind the camera or in front of it. Then the companies brainstormed and formed a plot and characters in accordance with how many actors they had, before hammering out the details of the script. By early afternoon each company had a first draft of a six scene screenplay, and had chosen their shooting locations around campus, and were working on a movie trailer. I wasn't kidding about the hard work.
In the afternoon Lynn took us through storyboarding, why film makers do it and how to go about it. She then showed everyone how to use a software program specifically for making storyboards. ANNND, we also had a brief introduction to the role of CGI and special effects animation in film, and specifically how it could be used in our two features.
