Last week I not only had Calvin showing off his science skills, but Carter invited all of us to the premiere of his new movie. One of the things I love about TAISM is the quarterly after school activities that are offered. All the teachers participate in leading classes after school teaching activities like gardening, basketball, padawan training (for the Star Wars fans), puppetry, music and dance, and many others.
This quarter Carter and Caleb both took a class on making puppets and Carter took a class on movie making. They started with flip book animation and moved into stop action animation using a digital camera and computer based movie making software. At the end of the quarter last week we were invited to a viewing party where all the kids showed off the movies they created.
Caleb with his best friends. He is always surrounded by girls.
Future Oscar winner?
Camille was just there for the food. Like all good movie viewings, this one had popcorn.
I held off on posting this entry because I really wanted to post Carter’s video with it, but I’ll just have to add it when I get the file from school. Carter’s movie, which he made with two friends, was about a shark and a surfer and how the shark ate the surfer. All the films were very short (under a minute) because each frame is a single photograph. It takes something like 50 photographs to make a 15 second movie.
The filmmaking process: After they set up the lego scene (in this case a surfer on a board) they take a picture, change the scene incrementally, take another picture, make a minor change . . . and repeat. Over and over. Then they load the files into a movie making program, make their edits and add audio. They also created opening and closing credits.
Funny side note: every movie had an element of violence. Whether it was the skateboarder who crashed and lost his head or the tanks shooting each other or the epic Star Wars battle . . . they were all about showing as much gore as possible. You might think it was a boy thing, but even the girls had things being blown up. I guess the fun of making movies is packing them full of action.
Everything the boys do at school makes me want to package up this school and take it with us when we move. I know no school is perfect, but this one comes pretty close!