think it. dream it. live it. design it.

hey gang. been a while since i've blogged but alot of positive things have been happening over at panther. i'll let jon cover ala, but believe me i've been having a blast working on miti with them. onto panther however, where we've been exploring in depth the joys of stop motion animation and film. with new materials from this medium we have definately drawn interest from the older teens. my goal is to continue this interest through this cycle and therefore into the next. in order, we first simply let the kids explore the camera for an entire period, doing whatever they found entertaining. we also brought a midi keyboard to explore on the side, which ended up in inspiring a free style jam session which was awesome. next visit we set up cameras facing the wall and gave them clay to create a short film, which they've had some experience doing, but this time we introduced sound effects, music, and voice recording, which provided a whole new outlet for this creative medium. some were insane with no plots, others were cartoon-like character shorts, but i'd have to say the fanta commercial was my favorite. and finally, last night, because the teen room was a bit crowded and the weather outside was perfect, i set up three cameras with chairs as tripods outside in the coutyard, where three seperate films could be made. teens slowly and catiously filtered outside, but by the end of the night it was a success. granted, i don't think we have any academy award nominees, unless there's a catagory for best breakdancing/fake-fighting short, but it definately promoted interest in the program with some new teens. i think a change of envirnment is always heathy as well. i'm curious to see where we go with this and how many kids will return for more. a couple ideas i need to work harder on doing is photographing the activities, making sure they sign in, make sure they label their names and the date on projects and films, i need to show pics or films from the previous visit, and get a field trip schedualed. otherwise, just feelin good to be doin what we do.
myles