Procrastination Studios

Unfortunately we only have 4 classes over the next 2 weeks due to the holidays this weekend. We had a successful meeting with the Grade 2 students who were eager to share their storyboards and act out their plays. Please arrive prepared on Wednesday and remember to bring your computers. The claymation groups will be filming in the computer lab and the plays will be filmed in the Grade 2 room using the smartboard as a background. If we work effectively, we should be able to complete filming in the one class.

Fur on Fire’s music video “Elevate Myself” has been chosen by their peers to represent Video Journalism in the IB Film Festival. Stay tuned for the times and dates for the IB Film Fest and the Video Journalism Film Fest.

Posters for your Genre project will adhere to the following guidelines:

• Posters must be created using Photoshop
• File size should be A4 Preset Size
• Files are saved and submitted as JPEGS
• Apply one of the tips from the Photoshop resources posted here

Here is the trailer from a project by some 12 year olds to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark in its entirety. Shooting will start on our scenes next class, don’t forget to start designing your poster to promote the scene.

Click on the image above to check out the video we saw in class. There are several more examples of creative work using Adobe programs at the Adobe Design Achievement Award winners.

Some of you have been using Adobe Photoshop to design your logos and posters. A couple groups have even tried using Adobe Illustrator to animate some of their work. I have located so great resources for these programs and used them to create a retro version of the Bearcat logo.

Here are the links to the tips and tutorials.

Photoshop Actions – Actions in photoshops can be used to complete a complex series of tasks with one click. You will have to download the shortcut to a folder in your Program folders. I used an Action to create the box above in one click.

Texture to Images – I used this tutorial to give my image a grainy look. Adding a textured layer with varying levels of opacity can do some interesting things to your image. You can also edit

Illustrator Tips – There are some great samples of the many things that you can do with Adobe Illustrator at this link. This includes making customized backgrounds and drawings, this could be very useful for designing your movie posters.

Description: Create a 1 minute short that copies a famous sequence from a movie shot for shot. You must limit yourself to movie from the 21^st century and they may not be scenes from a school or college. Then, you must re-write the script and make it a middle school film. Limit yourself to a maximum of three actors.

For this project, students will create a short film that not only meets illustrates a typical scene of that genre with the added twist of rewriting the setting to the middle school. It is not necessary that these films tell a complete a story; a piece of a story is sufficient, as long as there is clear evidence of genre conventions somewhere between the fade in and the fade out.

Product: At the conclusion of this project the student(s) will create a 1 minute film that mimics a scene from a particular genre in a middle school setting.

Objectives: Students will:

• identify a scene from a particular genre
• write a script for the scene set in the middle school
• complete a storyboard and identify filming locations
• film and edit their scene

Resources:

• Imdb.com
• Youtube

Hand in:

• Storyboard of scene
• Script – One page
• 1 minute short

We will spend the next week completing our empathy videos. Please use your class time wisely to plan, shoot and edit your work. Videos will be due next Wednesday, February 20th. Continue to update your blogs and post comments. We will use the online conversations to decide our next couple of projects including the mockumentary and genre spoof. Finally here is the Go around twice if you are happy video again.

Remember that each group should be writing a post each day to update their progress or share creative ideas.  Each individual will be responsible to post at least 1 comment before the next class.

Music Videos will be ready for Friday’s class. The videos can be in quicktime or wmv format but try to keep the file size reasonable. You can post the Video poster on the blog and we will be printing them out for the bulletin board.

Soundsnap has a large selection of sound effects conveniently organized by categories. You can download the sounds in wav or mp3 format. Check it out!

Here are two great links to have a look at. Please share your thoughts after you watch them.

J.J. Abrams on TED Talks

Abrams is a director of film and tv. His resume includes Lost, Alias and Mission Impossible 3 to name a few. In this entertaining presentation he discusses the source of his creativity and points out some great examples of mystery in other films.

Life After People

The teaser trailer for this show includes an explanation of the planning and storyboarding. Interesting to see how they came up with the ideas and the visuals for this show.