Just taught first Kids’ Digital Filmmaking Camp: Making Your Own Stop Motion Animation

20K Films just taught their first Kids’ Digital Filmmaking Camp: Making Your Own Stop Motion Animation. We had 4 students (three 10 year olds and one 8 year old), and I was personally blown away with not only how creative they all were, but with how quickly they caught onto what we were teaching in the camp.

Assistant Class Manager, Quinlan Kyp-Johnson, was on hand to help with the camp, and between the two of us, we had 2 different stop motion animation productions going on at the same time, and after simple tutorials in Final Cut Pro 7 and Apple’s music creation software, Garage Band, the students were making 2-3 stop motions per day!

The stop motions ranged from claymation to flip books to live person stop motion which gives the illusion of moving without walking and in one project, the illusion that one kid was riding the other kid like a skateboard something we saw someone do for a skateboard ad online and which we recreated with the students’ own original ending.

I also pulled an old Halloween costume out of my closet that was an inflatable Sumo Wrestler costume, and the kids had a ball with that and included the suit in some of their stop motions. I remarked to one mother that I could have made an entire weeklong kids’ camp called Sumo Suit Camp and it would have easily filled!

I was surprised by how much the students took to Garage Band, the music generating software that comes with new Apple computers. I didn’t think that they would take as much of a liking or interest in it, especially after two of the students admitted that their least favorite class was (sadly) music. They all made their own music for their stop motions using this program and even went above and beyond and just made music just to make music which is something that EVERYONE needs more of in their life.

You can read more about the students’ and parents’ thoughts on the camp here.

You can still sign up your child for a filmmaking camp this summer or to check out some of our adult filmmaking classes here.

Yes, Yes, Yes to the Canon EOS Moving Image Workshop last weekend in Chicago!

I am excessively anal when it comes to finding an answer or solving a problem, especially if it’s technical and it’s the only thing standing in my way of making a really good edit, doc, or visual idea come to fruition.  I was lucky enough after 20K Films’ Canon 7D purchase to meet via email Andrew Gleason, another Canon 7D owner and enthusiast, through an old college friend, and it was thanks to Andrew that I was able to nail down and find a great workable workflow for the post production process for the American Library Association video which we shot entirely on the Canon 7D right out of the box. Andrew was great, answered all of my questions, and had a lot of great first hand experience with the camera from working on his own projects.  I am now firmly entrenched in my belief that experience is the best teacher, especially since I myself am a teacher, and I often find that it is my work experience that really helps me provide my students with all of the tools, ideas, and know-how they need to go become media makers themselves.

Back to the class I took this past weekend through Createasphere called EOS Moving Image Workshop: Beyond the Still which was described as for: Cinematographers, Directors, and Producers, Independent Filmmakers, photographers, Exploring HD Video.

I wasn’t sure what the experience or knowledge level was for this workshop, but I have always been a big fan of workshops that are taught by working professionals who actually work in the field and heavily use the hardware/software that the workshop is teaching.  The workshop was taught by 3 instructors: Nancy Schreiber, ASC, who has DPed many independent features such as  Neil LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors, November (for which she won a best cinematography award from Sundance), and most recently Every Day with Helen Hunt and Liev Schreiber, as well as numerous tv episodes and documentaries (her experience is long and vast which really made this workshop worth it for me); Jared Abrams, who has worked extensively with HDSLRs in his own commercial work and also runs a great HDSLR resource blog called Cinema 5D; and Mike Sippel who is the Director of Engineering at Fletcher Camera in Chicago who was extremely well versed regarding manufacturer’s specs and the technical know how which led to  interesting tidbits as how CF cards have a life of 10,000 cycles or 3-4 years and will wear out after that, for example. He also delved in deeper to the technical aspects behind the spatial resolution and color sampling limitations of Canon  HDSLRs, but honestly that kind of information did not pertain to anything I needed to know from a documentary filmmaker and commercial videographer aspect, so I took notes just in case I ever hear those terms again, but I’m not sitting here studying that information in order to use the Canon 7D.

Day 1 and Day 2 were pretty intense in terms of topics covered and thanks to some very hands-on, extensive learning labs with the HDSLRs menus, shooting interior and exterior scenes, testing out different support/rigs setups for the cameras and just getting used to shooting video manually which involves simultaneously arranging the camera’s ISO, f-stop and shutter speed, which is a completely new and bizarre world of video shooting to me, someone who has primarily shot only on video cameras such as consumer levels camcorders and Panasonic’s prosumer level dvx100b, which I still own and LOVE and am actually shooting SICK CELLS, our current 20K Films’ doc on.  (Incidentally, Nancy Schreiber shot November, for which she won Sundance’s Best Cinematography award on this camera so it really is an amazing incredible camera that just is unfortunately in SD. But Panasonic has the HVX which is more or less their HD upgrade to the dvx.)

Nancy actually suggested the HVX or the Sony Ex-3 for shooting cinema verite doc work, especially if I have to “run and gun it” as she calls it. Which made me a little depressed on day one of the workshop when she told me this, because one of the major cons of the HDSLR cameras is that you have to tape in manual focus which means if you’re trying to tape “in the moment” or “cinema verite” you’re going to have some really messy work if you’re constantly trying to find your focus. But on day 2,  I mentioned this to Jared, one of the other instructors, and he suggested I try getting a different lens that will allow for me to have a more natural unfocused/focused look when I move towards and away from my subject that looks more natural to the human eye. He also said not to worry too much about constantly focusing, and that if I get too caught up in that, the doc work will look unnatural. They both had great advice like this throughout the workshop which I really appreciated. It’s not like you can just type in search words for this kind of knowledge and experience in google and get advice and answers, at least not the kind that I’m looking for.  Nancy and Jared also vibed together really well as instructors and their different avenues of experience intercut really well together throughout the course of the workshop.

Day 3 was a lot more relaxing which I appreciated after all of the information intake of the previous two days. Day 3 was focused more on post-production workflow and introduced different software that was helpful in editing. However, I still don’t see much point in using the software program, Shotput Pro, if it won’t log and transfer into FCP from the replica it makes of your CF card. (someone please enlighten me as to why I should use this program in my post-production workflow because I just don’t get it other than the fact that it finds and notifies you to footage if there is an error with it, but I don’t think we learned what to do if the program does find an error or if anything can be done at all.) I do think Plural Eyes, which is an audio/video sync program is definitely worthwhile, but I wish that we’d gone over that more and that a trial copy had been available to try out at the workshop. (Actually, I can’t remember if there was a trial or if we went over it more, I got distracted by trying to import the footage into FCP using Log and Transfer for Shotput Pro and I was also looking up HDSLR support equipment and accessories we’d learned about at the workshop.)

Now that I’m looking back at the workshop, I think it was a great investment especially since I plan to be a very avid Canon 7D shooter. I also am not a skilled nor knowledgeable camera person, and I have never worked with professional photography or DSLRs before so working with ISO, F-Stops and shutter speed is still a new and bizarre world to me, and thanks to the workshop, I feel like I actually have a working knowledge of these concepts now. It also helped that there was a Tribeca Flashpoint Academy Cinematography instructor at the workshop who was incredibly kind and generous with his time, and didn’t mind me asking him questions about basic cinematography. Did I mention that my background is more on the post-production end of things? So for someone like me, this workshop was a real eye opener, and Nancy was right when she called the HDSLRs “game changers.”

There were two things that I wish I had learned more about at the workshop and that’s Digital Asset Management in terms of working with HDSLRs from production to post-production, but it looks like Createasphere has its own workshop for that in New York this September, so I can understand why they didn’t want to delve into that in this workshop, but still a little bit more info about this would have been great. And even though I thought that Mike did a great job with teaching the post-production end of things on Day 3 and he did a phenomenal job on Day 1 with talking about the specs of the HDSLRs and the engineering behind them, I wish there had been an editor handy on day 3 to teach the post-production end of things. I really wanted to see full and complete workflows for post-production on Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. Jared and Nancy were both excellent, experienced, and well versed on the camera and DP end of things, but neither of them are editors or work much with post-production from what it seemed like. Mike was upfront that he was not an editor, but still an editor would have been nice.

The reason I even bother shelling out the money to take expensive and costly workshops like this is because I not only want to learn more and become more expert with certain software or hardware, but I want access to people who have been using this hardware and software and have been working with it. I feel that there are things you learn only by doing, and so far I have only found the information I have been looking for with my Canon 7D workflow (production and post) by talking to someone. I have not found many answers on the internet, in forums and certainly not in books yet, about HDSLR workflow.

Overall, this workshop was excellent and I would highly recommend it. The instructors and format of the workshop worked well with all different levels of experience and knowledge of the students in the workshop, the free swag and food were great, and I met some really great people who are serious about video and working with Canon HDSLRs at the workshop that I plan to keep in touch with. I really got what I was looking for out of the workshop and much more. Thank you Nancy, Jared, and Mike, as well as Marty and Josh from Createasphere for a truly amazing workshop and experience. I am definitely wielding my 7D with more ease and confidence now after taking this workshop.

Check out Createasphere’s website here for more info on their workshops.

Proceed and Be Bold! Screens in Indonesia

My good friend (who is also an amazing actor), Courtney Berne, is currently finishing up her year of teaching English in Indonesia, and decided to show her students Proceed and Be Bold! during the American Studies segment of her class.

Here is what Courtney emailed me after showing her students PaBB: “As for your film, it would have been easier for them to understand if there were English subtitles. But they liked it, yes. They found it really interesting. One of them, Ahda, made cards by hand via printing press (the Indonesian version that apparently is done mostly by hand, no major machinery) when he was in grade school and he said the film brought back memories. He really liked seeing how they do it in America, and found Amos and his printers very fascinating.”

I am thrilled to discover that people are letterpress printing in Indonesia. Letterpress printing sabbatical anyone?

Courtney has also shown the documentary to several of her English as a Second Language classes that she taught at a University in Chicago, and we love the fact that she is showing the documentary to her classes as part of her American Studies section. I think that Amos, his life story, and his art are parts of America that are not seen very often and most Americans don’t even know that Amos’ way of life even really exists. I’ve also gotten some of the most interesting observations about the documentary from non-Americans.

We really love showing this doc on the small screen across the US and rest of the world. (If you are reading this and want to organize a screening or purchase this doc, you can contact me at laura@20kfilms.com or you can visit our 20K Films store.)

I Have to Give Props for this New Website

I have to give some major props to my amazing website designer, Helen Kim, who is the Creative Executive behind The Think Farm design studio. I wanted a website that I could easily update myself, and Helen and one of her programmers (who are both based in LA) built the 20K Films website using WordPress.com, a free blog site, in order to make me a customizable website that I can update and change whenever I need to. They basically designed the shell of the site to match my logo and brand design and then Helen’s programmer wired up the inside of the blog to function according to specific guidelines, and all I had to do is sign into the blog site, use the instructions cheat sheet Helen wrote up for me and in a few minutes, I have the content for all of the pages, blog and news feed instantly updated and changed.

This is revolutionary. I mean, I am blown away every time I go to update/change something on the site which is often.

In order to update the site yourself, you do need to have some tech saavy, but Helen Kim was amazing in helping me through the small learning curve as I started to change things and couldn’t figure something out.

I really think that this is the best website design option I’ve ever had and I highly recommend checking out Helen Kim’s amazing design talent and her new amazing approach to designing websites for clients using wordpress.com.

Here’s another cool website made in wordpress.com: Rabbit Fever Documentary Production Blog. You should check out the trailer too!

Canon EOS Moving Image Workshop in Chicago

I’m planning on taking this upcoming Canon HDSLR workshop.

Canon 7D: Just the Beginning

I  had an idea about how amazing the new Canon 5D and 7D HDSLR cameras were (20K Films bought a Canon 7D from Calumet Photographic–highly highly recommend them and we’ll be teaching a basic HDSLR workshop with them in Sept. 2010— about two months ago and used it to shoot this video), but yesterday, I really got a glimpse into how much they will change independent filmmaking forever, making  easier and more affordable to make an amazing quality picture.

Welcome to Microbudget Filmmaking: When Documentary Subjects Become Crew

I was just looking through the old Proceed and Be Bold! production photos for some to put up  on the new 20K Films website, and I found this one of documentary subject, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. carrying one of our tripods for us! HA!

Sick Cells Production Journal: Trying Not To Poke Any Eyes Out Down in Champaign, IL

I’m taping down at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana, IL this weekend for our next doc, SICK CELLS where Marqus’ sister graduated this weekend.

I Really Dislike Google Voice

Why I don’t like Google voice part 1: I am not a big fan of google voice. Go ahead, make fun of me, but really it’s a huge pain.