busy, busy, busy

hey gang. i'm blogging after the mass hysteria of the mad scientist ball, which ended up driving many scientists mad. however, i keep hearing about its overall success which is encouraging.
alot has happened out at panther since the outbreak of breakdancing/fighting films dominated the plotlines of our short films. knowing that we needed to begin to focus on the different aspects of how a movie is made, i came up with activities that would focus the gruop on particular steps of movie making instead of handing them a camera and saying "go!". first step, storybaording. this i knew would be difficult to hook the kids into, considering it requires sitting in one spot for a length of time. so, out came "the simpsons". first, to communicate the concept that film is not simply one long cammera shot, but a series of them portraying different anglesand perspectives, we watched the first 30 seconds of an episode and counted how many camera angle changes occurred in that time. to make it fun, first we counted by ourselves, announced our estimate to the group, then counted outloud together to see who was closest. marquas won with 31 camera angle changes. next, i handed out three storyboard sheets and pencils. this time we continued to watch the episode, but after three to four scene changes we paused the show and attempted to storyboard what we just watched. i still have some great storyboard examples from the kids of where homer buys a lottery ticket from apu at the quickie mart. overall, we had a blast, and i feel drawing from shows the kids relate to really draws interest. ran outta time to let you know about my last three visits cause i gotta be in dino dig. but the following blog will be about our win, lose or draw day, movie quotes marathan, our field trip to tcu's radio, tv, film department, and finally our this past monday, our improv movie dialog day. wish you all the best.
myles