I signed up for film camp in April because I wanted to learn how to make film. I'd messed around with making movies before, but wanted to learn about the process from step one. And plus, video is the language of our generation, and I think that whoever is good or knows how to use video to communicate with people will succeed more in life.
I took this class at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, and it was a lot of fun. We had a class of twelve people, and we ended up doing three filming projects while we were there. The first day, we went around the building with a camcorder, and filmed stills and short clips that used light and color. It basically was like taking pictures with video. The second project, we composed a haiku and shot it. We did this in groups of threes, and my group made a haiku about nature, so we shot a bunch of images with trees and leaves and stuff like that. It was about 25 seconds long, and I have to say that it was pretty good. The last project, we basically could shoot anything, as long as we conveyed a certain emotion in the film at some point. Our group was given the emotion "confusion" and so we had a story that involved a girl from America getting lost on the streets of Madrid (getting lost and not knowing where to go is confusing). We had a girl from Spain in our group (Irene, she's really awesome and talks really fast in Spanish), so that's why the video took place in Madrid. It was hard though, we couldn't have any English content, so we had to film it in places where there were license plates or anything like that.
The equipment we used was amazing. The first two projects, we used a normal camcorder, one that any soccer mom would use (and when I say soccer mom I mean someone who wants to shoot a lot of family events) and a tripod. But it was the third project that had amazing equipment. We shot the third project on a four thousand dollar camera. FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!! It was one of those things that I really wanted to get my hands on, because it seemed so cool, but then I also REALLY didn't want to break it, because I didn't want to be in debt for the rest of my life. We also used a boom (a microphone on the end of a really long stick) and we looked very professional.
This is a picture of me with the very high-end camera, shooting a scene in a cafe. Don't I look professional?
You look quite professional in that picture, Akipo. (You do realize Sarah and I are going going to be calling you that forever now). Film camp sounds interesting. I don't think I'd ever do it, because I'm not creative enough. I did an elective called Media Arts this year, and it was bad because I really couldn't think of anything to make a video out of.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I realized something: Your blogs are all really professional and long and stuff, while mine and a lot of Sarah's are basically our stream of consciousness. Hahah you put a lot more effort into this than we do. Good job!
And the end result was really fantastic! Very creative shots made for a nice film. Can't wait to post it on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I think you'd be good at editing. Did you just make movies in Media Arts? I thought you liked that class...
ReplyDeleteI probably would be good at editing, but not the actual creation of the movies. We had like three assignments, each to make a specific type of movie. It was interesting...though the teacher, Mr. Jones, didn't seem to like me. Not really sure why...
Delete