Make an Amazing Film and Change the World!

added on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 11:31 pm by Penny

As the admin for this blog, I get to rub shoulders with some pretty talented and amazing technical instructors, and I do get pretty envious! But once in awhile they come to me for my little area of creative thought, and I get to do what I do best, which is to think of how on earth people use the internet to find what they’re looking for. I take that info and share it with the authors, so they can write technical copy to be reachable by those people. I don’t write the articles here, I take the written articles and insert them into the blog with pictures and videos. I add categories and tags, keywords, and I brainstorm about why kids want to come to summer camp – what are the needs that can be met and exceeded by our training and summer camps for kids, teens and adults and how Digital Media Academy’s training and summer camps can help people meet their goals. I try to make sure those important ideas and words are included. And it all ties in together – we have the terrific professional instructors, the amazing university locations for our summer camps (Stanford, UCLA, UC San Diego, University of British Columbia at Vancouver, University of Chicago, Drexel, Swarthmore, Brown, George Washington University Washington, DC, Harvard, University of Texas at Austin.) We just need to present the information in a way that is interesting, original, and findable. Findable being key!

This blog post is an exercise in how to use a few words to describe videos posted by our film students that have attended film summer camps with Digital Media Academy. Our campers love to post their videos on YouTube, what words do they need to use to be found and viewed? If I were a teen with a dream to make an amazing film and change the world, where would I start? I’d probably search the internet for amazing films that are already changing the world, and work backward from there to learn where to go to learn how to make an amazing video! Digital Media Academy teaches a wide variety of courses, some of which teach kids to make amazing films at film summer camp.

As I was writing a pretty dry document for our instructors to use this year, the nuts and bolts of posting student videos to YouTube, I was trying to think of a great example of a “viral video” – the holy grail of “viral” and how to achieve that goal. And I remembered that I had used a great video as and example in a “surprise and delight your customer” post… shown here. (And you can also check out another amazing viral video: educate girls)

If I were the original creator of this video, and if I had made it during summer camp, I’d post it with tags like this: “Digital Media Academy Summer Camp”, “Film Summer Camp”, “Make a Film”, “Teen Summer Camp” and so on. To view it on the blog here, post it, click on “embed”, select the viewer color box you like, and select size 560 X 340, and paste it in the post in “Html” view.

Enjoy the video!

I’m going to illustrate a few things simultaneously here, so bear with me as it all weaves together with this one incredible viral film!

Things to Keep In Mind When Posting Summer Camp Videos to YouTube

Categories – YouTube has several categories that are appropriate for summer camp videos – check out the categories by clicking on the “browse” tab next to the search box.
Think about your video – if your video is the answer, what was the question? If the question is “I want to watch something funny”, and your video is funny, consider placing it in the “Comedy” category. If it’s a technical film about how to create something using a certain technology, consider “Education”, “HowTo”, “Science & Technology”, or “Gaming”.
Post your video and select your tags. Tags help people find the video. If the film is made by the Digital Media Academy staff or a student, use “Digital Media Academy” as one of the tags. If it’s made by kids at summer camps, or if this film would help kids looking for a film summer camp see what happens behind the scenes at film summer camp, use “film summer camp” as a tag. If the camp is about “skateboard summer camp” or “academy for game design” use those words in the tags. Whatever the title of the summer camp is, that would make a good tag. Use all of the available tags.
Write a brief description of the video, mentioning the name of the summer camp, the location of the summer camp, the age group, and what made it special. Include a link to the page on the Digital Media Academy website that displays either the course name of the summer camp, or the location of the program.

I’d love to see all the videos made by students and staff this summer at Digital Media Academy!

This film was made by Keith English, acclaimed artist, animator and instructor for the Digital Media Academy. He created the animations for this promo for the Sonoma International Film Festival.

Kids, post your videos, and leave a comment on this post. Wouldn’t it be fun to have a contest for the funniest video? Please let me know (especially!) if you post a video to the comedy category!

Check out Digital Media Academy’s videos on YouTube! Have a blast at summer camp!

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