At least there's one school that gives it's students the resources and enrichment to see them do their take on '80s NewWave!
Had to be told today how the goverment's cracking down on school lunches all over the nation. It's rather funny how it's gotten to this point, yet I can remember the days when I would get two fish sandwiches for lunch (just getting slices of Pizza Hut pizza in junior high was like a shock to me 15 years ago). :)
I feel sorry for kids these days with the way the public schools are being runned. A district in my town already is phasing in uniforms for all classes, yet I went to a high school that didn't mind me wearing cigarette brand-logoed T-shirts.
Growing up, I used to thought of high school's more like the way they were usually depicted in movies and TV, but apparently, you can't always get a scene out of "Porky's" happen to you. :(
Leafing through their page, I see a few other interesting films, such as the following...
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/pyro.mov Apparently a couple 9th graders blow up different brands of firecrackers in a mason jar to measure the decibels of each brand, recommending in the end that Black Cat is the best! (wonder how many schools could get away with this nowadays?)
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/rodentbusters.mov Another 5th grader production where a group of kids come into a thrid grade class with ferrets to hunt down rodents that were said to be in there, but appaerntly it didn't really make any sense, and eventually deviated into some Reading Rainbow schtick where several books are featured relating to mice.
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/knug.mov Not really a student production, but I kinda wish they had production values like this at the grade schools I've been to (where the best PCs they had were still AppleIIe's).
I always wanted to make these kinds of videos when I was in school, but the av student groups never really came to anything. It's a shame I didn't have the guts to dare to be stupid and do something, anything, and commit it to tape. I gotta salute these kids for doing what I couldn't.
I envy Matt and C.B. and everyone else at Corn Pone Flicks for doing what they do and wish I could find a group of folks in Dallas/Fort Worth to do similar video stunts.
Reading this reminded me of my days in high school when I was in a film/videography class that lasted a semester during my sophmore year. We didn't do much other than studying things like focusing, angles, shots and other typical things relating to film production. At the time we also got to check out Super-8mm cameras and learned how to splice film together the old-fashion way!
I think the finals project was to make a video to show the class, and the best I had was getting my siblings together and tried my best to do a short horror-type thing that went knowhere! Sadly this same thing played out in my college film course, and on 16mm format no less (maxed out credit cards on that)!
My high school used to do a news program of sorts that was to be run during study hall on the same TVs that the "Channel One News" also was shown. Sadly the equipment and technique was shoesring at best. Two people sat in a very dark blue set and read off the news off cards stuck to poster boards in front of the camera (not so much cue cards, as the text was still too small to read). The news was actually the same annoumcements the pricipal would've told us in the morning, so it was old by the time we would see this (though the program was taped a day earlier afterschool). The equipment was two VHS camcorders hooked into a JVC A/V mixer of sorts, sporting a few S-VHS decks, two or three monitors and a JVC character generator, capable of only one font, one color, four sizes, that's all! They used to try to do a kind of switchign between cameras via an A/V switcher, but just went with one camera that they would have to pause and un-pause for the cuts.
When I tried out for the staff, they didn't care for me to read the news as I couldn't read their stupid handwriting, rather would've prepaired beforehand but they didn't have time for that anyway. I otherwise made suggestions for what I felt would've spruced up the whole news thing completely, but they had to go off on stating the typical "It would cost money!"
Sometime after I left school years later I found out somehow they actually got to do the weather forecast, I think they stolen my ideas (or else they finally got money)!
Growing up during that time, I would buy issues of Videomaker Magazine I would fine just a couple blocks down at a convenient store, and read up on the latest news and products such as the Video Toaster and the Videonics gear. Did the CPF folks ever had that? I used to have dreams of having the Videonics MX-1 in bed with me! Back then, I was rather psyched up for wanting to get into that, but hardly found any perfect resources or help at all locally. Best I've done was spent $100 on a Krasnogorsk K-3 16mm camera.
Lately with the rise of non-linear editing programs for computers like Adobe Premiere as well as other cool software like After Effects, it makes me want to get back into it all over again (now that I have the software, but not the know-how). I'm also striving to become an animator as well, namely as I tend to favor that side too well and know how I want to go about it.
Hell I might even go back to my old high school if they can make me an assitant in their film class if needed. Kinda want to see what the li'l squirts are working on these days.
I'm always bidding on MX-1s on eBay, one day I'll get one.
We've finally reached the point where desktop video and desktop DVD authoring is available to anybody who wants to make movies and sell/distribute them. I'm excited by the possibilities. Anybody can make a film these days, and it'll be interesting to see what comes out of this easy access to cheap and/or next to nothing tools that are out there.
I picked up a copy of Toon Boom last year and I'm gonna try my hand at some animation, too. It'd be a shame not too at least try.
It's true about how the world is today now that digital applications for filmmaking are now available to the masses.
As for animation programs, I have several installed on my system, Flash, Toonz, Animo, Maya and such, though I stil need to find the time to use them.
Toonz and Animo are 2-D programs that are used reguarly in traditional hand-drawn animation by many studios currently. You would scan drawings in you do by hand and then color them through "Digital Ink & Paint" before composite\ing them later, or output it elsewhere for post-production.
I also have the necessary equipment to do that type of animation (a 12-field aniamtion disc with table) as well as some supplies, though I would need to buy more in order to have enough to learn privately from.
5 comments:
At least there's one school that gives it's students the resources and enrichment to see them do their take on '80s NewWave!
Had to be told today how the goverment's cracking down on school lunches all over the nation. It's rather funny how it's gotten to this point, yet I can remember the days when I would get two fish sandwiches for lunch (just getting slices of Pizza Hut pizza in junior high was like a shock to me 15 years ago). :)
I feel sorry for kids these days with the way the public schools are being runned. A district in my town already is phasing in uniforms for all classes, yet I went to a high school that didn't mind me wearing cigarette brand-logoed T-shirts.
Growing up, I used to thought of high school's more like the way they were usually depicted in movies and TV, but apparently, you can't always get a scene out of "Porky's" happen to you. :(
Leafing through their page, I see a few other interesting films, such as the following...
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/pyro.mov
Apparently a couple 9th graders blow up different brands of firecrackers in a mason jar to measure the decibels of each brand, recommending in the end that Black Cat is the best! (wonder how many schools could get away with this nowadays?)
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/rodentbusters.mov
Another 5th grader production where a group of kids come into a thrid grade class with ferrets to hunt down rodents that were said to be in there, but appaerntly it didn't really make any sense, and eventually deviated into some Reading Rainbow schtick where several books are featured relating to mice.
http://www.hawley.k12.mn.us/elem/gallery/hawleywood/web%20movies/knug.mov
Not really a student production, but I kinda wish they had production values like this at the grade schools I've been to (where the best PCs they had were still AppleIIe's).
I always wanted to make these kinds of videos when I was in school, but the av student groups never really came to anything. It's a shame I didn't have the guts to dare to be stupid and do something, anything, and commit it to tape. I gotta salute these kids for doing what I couldn't.
I envy Matt and C.B. and everyone else at Corn Pone Flicks for doing what they do and wish I could find a group of folks in Dallas/Fort Worth to do similar video stunts.
Reading this reminded me of my days in high school when I was in a film/videography class that lasted a semester during my sophmore year. We didn't do much other than studying things like focusing, angles, shots and other typical things relating to film production. At the time we also got to check out Super-8mm cameras and learned how to splice film together the old-fashion way!
I think the finals project was to make a video to show the class, and the best I had was getting my siblings together and tried my best to do a short horror-type thing that went knowhere! Sadly this same thing played out in my college film course, and on 16mm format no less (maxed out credit cards on that)!
My high school used to do a news program of sorts that was to be run during study hall on the same TVs that the "Channel One News" also was shown. Sadly the equipment and technique was shoesring at best. Two people sat in a very dark blue set and read off the news off cards stuck to poster boards in front of the camera (not so much cue cards, as the text was still too small to read). The news was actually the same annoumcements the pricipal would've told us in the morning, so it was old by the time we would see this (though the program was taped a day earlier afterschool). The equipment was two VHS camcorders hooked into a JVC A/V mixer of sorts, sporting a few S-VHS decks, two or three monitors and a JVC character generator, capable of only one font, one color, four sizes, that's all! They used to try to do a kind of switchign between cameras via an A/V switcher, but just went with one camera that they would have to pause and un-pause for the cuts.
When I tried out for the staff, they didn't care for me to read the news as I couldn't read their stupid handwriting, rather would've prepaired beforehand but they didn't have time for that anyway. I otherwise made suggestions for what I felt would've spruced up the whole news thing completely, but they had to go off on stating the typical "It would cost money!"
Sometime after I left school years later I found out somehow they actually got to do the weather forecast, I think they stolen my ideas (or else they finally got money)!
Growing up during that time, I would buy issues of Videomaker Magazine I would fine just a couple blocks down at a convenient store, and read up on the latest news and products such as the Video Toaster and the Videonics gear. Did the CPF folks ever had that? I used to have dreams of having the Videonics MX-1 in bed with me! Back then, I was rather psyched up for wanting to get into that, but hardly found any perfect resources or help at all locally. Best I've done was spent $100 on a Krasnogorsk K-3 16mm camera.
Lately with the rise of non-linear editing programs for computers like Adobe Premiere as well as other cool software like After Effects, it makes me want to get back into it all over again (now that I have the software, but not the know-how). I'm also striving to become an animator as well, namely as I tend to favor that side too well and know how I want to go about it.
Hell I might even go back to my old high school if they can make me an assitant in their film class if needed. Kinda want to see what the li'l squirts are working on these days.
I'm always bidding on MX-1s on eBay, one day I'll get one.
We've finally reached the point where desktop video and desktop DVD authoring is available to anybody who wants to make movies and sell/distribute them. I'm excited by the possibilities. Anybody can make a film these days, and it'll be interesting to see what comes out of this easy access to cheap and/or next to nothing tools that are out there.
I picked up a copy of Toon Boom last year and I'm gonna try my hand at some animation, too. It'd be a shame not too at least try.
It's true about how the world is today now that digital applications for filmmaking are now available to the masses.
As for animation programs, I have several installed on my system, Flash, Toonz, Animo, Maya and such, though I stil need to find the time to use them.
Toonz and Animo are 2-D programs that are used reguarly in traditional hand-drawn animation by many studios currently. You would scan drawings in you do by hand and then color them through "Digital Ink & Paint" before composite\ing them later, or output it elsewhere for post-production.
I also have the necessary equipment to do that type of animation (a 12-field aniamtion disc with table) as well as some supplies, though I would need to buy more in order to have enough to learn privately from.
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