LAST DAY! Motion Picture Camp Signoff!

Today, the classes were split up. Down in the basement with Chris and Paul and AJ, students who hadn't finished their projects (or had discovered problems after rendering the day before) had the opportunity to completely finished them.

In room 1221, Tony showed the final videos to everyone who had already completed their projects. Everyone laughed and enjoyed the fruits of their labors. And then, the class celebrated by watching an Alfred Hitchcock Film, Rear Window, taking notes on the cinematography and story line. Students trickled in from the other room as they completed their projects.

After discussing the movie upon its completion, the class went on break and got lunch until it was time to leave for the Summer Recognition Program at Memorial Union. Though Tony had quite a time keeping things relatively orderly, the day was fun and laid back, a perfect end to Motion Picture Camp!

FULL DAY! Motion Picture Camp - the home stretch!

First full day of ITA labs all summer! The day began by showing a few example movies - Tony and Paul showed AJ's Totally Nutzoid Girl and asked the students to point out specific features of the movie they thought they could utilize.

Next, the students entered into a long session of Project Studio Time. Erica and Saige spent a good long time editing, being almost finished with their videos; Ma kept faithfully working on her really good music/dance video. The Zombie movie of Dylan, Itzel, Lucy, Clara, and Aubrey kept getting better and better (and shorter and shorter as they cut out unnecessary clips to make their horror film more exciting), Collin's group got a lot of help from Tony and Jele, Patrick, Nick, and Illa filmed a new scene and continued editing.

At 11:30, Elizabeth brought the class together to take the permit test. There was still a lot of 'work time' energy, but everyone managed to stay relatively quiet the whole time.

After a wonderful Chipotle lunch, the class reconvened to finish up their projects. Aubrey and Dylan went to overdub, the final part of their movie production. Collin's group completely finished. Erica and Saige also had a bit of overdubbing to do and then were finished too. Jele's group completely finished with Tony's help. And Ma and Elizabeth finished up her dance video. Wow, great job everyone!

The day ended with the road test.

Day 8: Star Wars and Project Studio Time

Tony began the day by watching some of his favorite clips from fail.com. Afterwards, Elizabeth shared a movie she's been working on that incorporates many special effects. She asked the class to watch out for:

• Sin City Affect
• Ghost Effect
• Floating Objects
• Light Sabers
• Fast/Slow Motion

Afterwards, work time began and Elizabeth showed a few students who were interested how to do these effects. The rest of the class continued with their projects - by the end of the day, many people were getting ready to do overdubbing tomorrow! Projects need to be completed by the end of the day tomorrow!

Day 7: Sound Design

The day began as Tony gave a presentation on sound design. The class talked about various youtube videos, including a really funny cat who was very confused about what a printer is . . . the video had added sound effects to make it more dramatic.

Tony then introduced freesound.org and explained how you can preview and download any sound from the site. As Tony was explaining, Remmy, Oscar and Nick all suddenly jerked back pulling at their headphones; they had previewed a high pitched screeching noise entitled something rather inappropriate for this blog and found it to be rather startling!

Tony led the class in a sound design challenge with the Purple Rain video. They were supposed to overdub a scene using their in class computers microphone. Each student was soon busily planning what to say, recording, and adding music and sound effects. Different students took different approaches - Dylan did a more realistic to the actually filming whereas Ma tried to figure out how to overdub in Hmong.

Afterwards, Tony let the class loose to work on their projects! More to follow tomorrow!

And a new week commences!

Day 6 of Motion Picture Camp has begun! Today the class listened as Tony and AJ explained the basics of film editing in Vegas. They went over:

• splitting
• titles
• speeding/slowing
• ungrouping and regrouping
• reversing
• video effects
• audio effects (especially reverb and pitch shift)
• putting in images from photoshop and using them as titles in Vegas
• Downloading fonts at dafont.com

The rest of the afternoon, Project Studio Time! Different groups split off in different directions, some filming, others scriptwriting, and the majority editing. Ma's doing a music video by herself, Erica and Saige are working together, and Clara, Lucy, Itzel, Aubrey, and Dylan are working together - everyone but Dylan went to film their music video. Dylan worked on a fun stop animation film he did at home and edited.

See Dylan's stop animation here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP3LGIJO8EY

Another great day, complete!

Music Video Day!

Today we started by watching the movies from the Blitz. Everyone did a great job, as expected, and the discussion afterward raised some good points about some of the things that the students are going to have to think about in regards to the final projects. One point is acting--it's not a good thing when an actor is smiling when he's supposed to be serious. Also, there were some technical issues with some of the films, but other than that, everything looked and sounded great!

Once that was finished, the class broke up into groups for filming music videos. The first hurdle in handling that for a lot of the groups was deciding what song to use. With five or six people in a group, it was hard for everyone to come to an agreement about what music would be best. In the end, though, the groups knuckled down and got to work, going off to film wherever they could. Some went outside, exploring the campus, while others used the halls and labs for their settings.

Tomorrow is the second day for working on these videos, and they're going to be awesome!!!

Blitz!!!

Today was the Blitz, and all of the students did very well. It's no easy task, putting together and entire movie from start to finish, but everyone went right to work and had a lot of fun doing it. The theme this year was "perspectives," and it was something that seemed to hit a chord with a lot of the students. They did films on differences between races, ages, sexes, and even points of view.

All in all, great work, class of 2013, and thanks for making this year's blitz one of the best we've had!