Anyone Wanna Win an Award?

If you're considering entering your students' work in a festival, it's not the struggle it used to be. In the past you had to search for film/video festivals, make many tapes, and send them all out. Of course, it's now gone digital. On Withoutabox you can search through festivals by date and fill out one form to apply to many festivals. You can also search just to see what events are coming up in your community. Heck, when I was a student, I used to volunteer at festivals just to see all the great films.

Bronx Students Learn Filmmaking, Tribeca Style - New York Times

I'm happy for the kids, really I am. Tribeca filmmakers reaching out to inner city kids is a good thing. However, I can't help but think there was an opportunity missed here. It just seems like the article is being kind - like the film wasn't that good.

People assume that teaching media is easy. That all you have to do is show up with a camera and the kids will get it and create great work. But then, I guess people assume filmmaking is easy too.

Web 2.0 Pocket Dictionary

Here's a handy cheatsheet for all the ways the kids are using the web today. e.g. A short list you can use to generate lessons that are relevant to your students. Classroom vlog anyone?
Web 2.0 Pocket Dictionary

Stop Motion Options

The Workbook Project is a fascinating Blog dedicated to helping "content creators" share resources and techniques. I found them via this great article HOW TO: Stop Motion on a Budget but I will be adding their site to my list of favorites. Most of the articles are for film wannabee insiders, but it's clear that a lot of their material will be relevant to us teachers too.

You should also know, that the folks over at Boinx have some great stop motion software that I've used with many of my students. iStopmotion works with digital still (usb) cameras, video (firewire) cameras including the iSight, and the cameras that now come built in on the iMacs and iBooks. They also have an educational license and volume discounts.

Oh, and if push comes to shove, you can also use Quicktime Pro to make animation or time lapse movies. All you need are a series of stills that are sequentially numbered. (01, 02, 03...99, 100, 101, etc.) Follow the directions for making a slide show but use a frame rate that fits your animation.

Mac 101: Preview Media with Column View

Nice tip here from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. I only discoverd this trick recently and have found it very helpful for cleaning off old student projects from full drives.
Preview Media with Column View

A great idea for iLearners - another way to study on your iPod

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): iQuiz Maker

"Well that didn't take long. We just mentioned the release of Apple's newest iPod game, iQuiz, and now Aspyr has already come out with iQuiz Maker. This little application makes it easy to create custom quizzes and load them on your iPod. Of course you can also share your iQuizzes with others as well. The iQuiz site already contains several sample iQuizzes as well as three different themes. This could conceivably turn your iPod into a study tool (or at least that's what you can tell mom).

iQuiz Maker is a free download from Aspyr Media."

Everything Old is New Again

One of the first ways that video was used in classrooms was to allow students to view and evaluate their own work and progress (think of video in foreign language labs or special education classes). Now it seems that use has made it to the professional arena.

Saturday's New York Times features an article on how job seekers and college applicants are using video to prepare for interviews. In addition to detailing this process, Auditioning in a Video Resume also mentions something called a "Visume" which, they claim may be more popular in the future. Just remember the cautionary tale of the applicant who was so arrogant in his video that it became an online comedy piece.
"Impossible is Nothing"


What are the implications for our classrooms? Hopefully not a bunch of dry business videos. But perhaps something with more value and practical applications than the average student made PSA (Public Service Announcement).

(Note - NYT free membership may be required to view the article.)

Media Management Tip - Photos

Courtesy of the great folks at Techlearning, a Renaming Photos
how-to for both Mac and PC.

(FYI: On the Mac, you can also use Automator for this task and many others, but it's a little more complicated.)

Adding Audio and Sound Folders to iMovie

Nice Tutorial over at Macworld: How to Add (and Remove) audio and sound folders to iMovie
iMovie 6’s Media tab is a very handy tool for adding audio and visual effects to your movie projects—assuming your media are in a folder that’s listed in either the Audio or Photos tab within the Media section. But what if they’re not? For instance, I will sometimes use a desktop picture as the background behind some scrolling text. I can drag the image to be used into iMovie each time, of course, but things would be much simpler if I could just make my user’s Pictures folder available on the Photos tab in the Media tool.

Lighting On a Classroom Budget

For those teachers who haven't done much photography or pro film/video work, let me tell you a little secret: lighting is really important. I don't say this to be glib, but I've seen *so* many student videos where there is no lighting used except what was coming from the fluorescent overhead.

I think it's crucial to teach kids to look at the faces of the people they're videotaping and try to get a little light in the eyes. One way to do this is to have some inexpensive do it yourself type lighting that the kids can use. Here's one great example:
Hobo DIY Softbox for Perfect Portraits

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation

It's a little old by blog standards, but I just found a cool behind the scenes look at Pixar, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA.org
Probably more appropriate for the younger set, but still quite good. Give your students a sense of the math and art that go into creating some of their favorite films (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, etc.)

Cool Tool: Sample Garage Band doc

Nine inch nails has posted a garage band doc of their latest single at nine inch nails: current. It's a great resource. Nice to see what's possible with the program. And they say they'll be posting garage band docs of every track on their album over the next few months! Nice way to give back to their fans and our students.