Posts Tagged film camp


Teens get the full film camp experience at Digital Media Academy summer camps and week-long courses.

Watch a movie created by teens in the Filmmaking course at University of Pennsylvania DMA camp this past summer. All teen students in the class played a part in writing the movie script, storyboard the movie scenes, acting in various shots around campus, filming with high quality cameras, directing the scenes, editing music for the video, and editing the video in Final Cut Pro on their own Apple computer.

This video is just one example of the creative movies that are created by teens at Digital Media Academy’s summer film camps. Enjoy the suspense-filled movie a group of DMA film students made entitled… “Re-Encountered”

All summer camp courses for teens

Do want to learn how to use Final Cut Pro like professionals in the film industry?

You can learn Final Cut Pro at any of Digital Media Academy’s prestigious training locations including Stanford University in Palo Alto, UC San Diego,Ā UniversityĀ of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago in Illinois, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins, George Washington University in Washington D.C., Harvard University in Boston, St. Johns in New York, University of California, Los Angeles, and more. Take a filmmaking course, learn how to use the complete Final Cut Studio (Apple Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro), become a Documentary Filmmaker, learn how to create a film from scratch and complete the editing with Final Cut Pro…. the choice is yours.

Perhaps you need to boost your job career. Maybe youĀ wantĀ to break into the film industry. Maybe you already make movies, but you need to learn the latest version of Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio apps. You can learn all this and more at Digital Media Academy Final Cut Pro training sessions, film courses and filmmaking summer camps.

film and final cut pro training

DMA on the Sea : Final Cut Pro and Photoshop Cruise

And if you haven’t heard… DMA also offers Final Cut Pro training on a cruise ship with DMA on the SEA! That’s right. You can enjoy theĀ luxuriousĀ and exotic experience on a Caribbean or MexicanĀ RivieraĀ cruise while learning Apple Final Cut Pro. Learn more about the Final Cut Pro and film cruise here : DMA on the Sea.

dma on the sea : final cut pro and photoshop cruise

My name is Matthew Levie, and I’ll be teaching Documentary Filmmaking again this summer. I’m a professional editor, and feel free to browse my web site to see what I do.

Last year’s Documentary Filmmaking class was a fantastic experience for me as a teacher. The students included:

• a businesswoman from Boston,
• a sociologist from Japan,
• a teenager from France,
• a flight attendant from Miami,
• a scientist from Texas,
• and a teacher from South Carolina

Imagine what you could learn from a group like that!

Here’s a small snippet from the course. Since I’m an editor I can’t resist an example of phenomenal documentary editing. Have a look at the following clip, from the documentary Carrier, about the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

So first, one of the pilots introduces the idea that everybody on the carrier needs to do their job correctly, at the right time, for the carrier to function properly. And that sets off this montage of flight deck operations, set to—wait, can it be?—the ā€œMarch of the Wooden Soldiersā€ from Tchaikovsky’s ā€œThe Nutcracker.ā€

Notice how similar motions are grouped together—there’s a beautiful series of circular motions, for instance. And at the end, somebody declares ā€œit’s like a ballet.ā€ Which makes perfect sense, since the filmmakers have already make that perfectly clear from a visual standpoint! But then they extend the metaphor to other areas of the ship, particularly the people feeding the ship and cleaning it up.

This is actually an important priority of the filmmakers: making the viewers understand that an aircraft carrier isn’t all about the planes and the flight deck, but that there are people greasing the cables and cleaning the toilets as well. And they’ve done a great job of conveying that visually at every opportunity.

Want more? Well, you’ll have to come to Stanford. Not a lot of people regret spending a week in Northern California, and I’m sure you’ll learn a tremendous amount and enjoy yourself as well!

Browse the Documentary Film class syllabus here.

Kids learn how to make a movie at summer camp!

This is a project the Digital Media Adventures film class (movie making and special effects) made in between movie projects this past summer at DMA summer camp in Michigan. Somehow they managed to shoot these hundreds of photos and stitch them together in Final Cut Pro as a fun project in between the two other short films they made in one week! Ā This is truly a great film camp experience for kids.

Learn more about DMA’s Film and Computer Camps for Kids

See what teens made at Digital Media Academy film camp this summer in Chicago!

This video was made by shooting hundreds of individual JPEG photos and piecing/editing them together in Final Cut Pro. This was made during DMA Film Camp in Chicago this past summer in the Teen Film Editing andĀ Ā Filmmaking Course. Learn how to make a movie like this at a DMA course this summer!

Have you ever wanted to know how to make a music video like professionals in the music industry?

Digital Media Academy is offering a week-long Music Video Production training course at many prestigious universities across the U.S. Get involved with the multi-billion dollar music industry. Get a jump start in your career! Mix beats, record samples, and create a sweet video production in just one week. This 5 day class will teach you the techniques of making music and making videos – then mixing the two skills together.

Learn the skills to make music videos like you’ll see on MTV and VH1. Work on the latest computer equipment, video equipment, audio recording equipment, production software and cameras. The only limit is your creativity at DMA summer camps!

Check out the Music and Video Production Course.

Learning how to make a music video

Digital Media Academy offers teen film camp experiences, film camps for kids, and professional level video production and digital filmmaking courses for adults.

Computer Camp for Teens

Computer Camp for Kids

By Katy Scoggin – Lead Instructor Hands On Digital Filmmaking for Teens

Last August, I taught Hands On Digital Filmmaking for Teens at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The class was a really successful exercise in collaboration and one of the highlights of my summer. I think everybody realized during that week that what you can accomplish as a group is a lot bigger than what you can create on your own.

It took me a lot of years to realize the value of teamwork. As a high school student, I loathed group projects because they always meant the same thing: I would end up doing all the work for several people. What a drag.

Since becoming a filmmaker, though, I’ve learned that teamwork is not about a bunch of slackers and the over-achievers who pick up after them. Real teamwork is about getting a bunch of creative minds together, bouncing ideas off one another, distributing work evenly and according to different folks’ strengths, and eventually coming up with a project that is bigger—and far cooler—than what any member of the group could have created alone.

That’s what my Philly students did last summer in the film camp course. They began by working individually on script ideas, which they later pitched to the class. Everybody got really excited about one student’s thriller idea. The story is about a girl who reveals the identity of a serial killer by posting a video of his latest murder on YouTube. After developing the script to suit everyone’s taste, we cast the project with some of our more performative members and broke the script down according to location.

Everyone who was interested in shooting—including the actors—had the opportunity to get behind the camera. Other students learned how to slate each take as camera assistants; lock the set down and watch for oncoming pedestrians as production assistants; and hold the boom pole as sound recordists. Everybody always had a job to do. And if each individual hadn’t held his or her own weight, we would not have completed the movie in such a short time span.

They say each movie is made three times: First you write it. Then you shoot it. Then you edit. After our two-day production period was over, we hunkered down and started to put the movie together. If you’ve ever written a paper, you understand that editing is basically rewriting. It’s the same in the cutting room: once you put the images you’ve captured into order, you can reorder them in a thousand different ways. Finding the best way to tell a visual story is one of the most challenging and, ultimately, most gratifying aspects of filmmaking.

In our digital film class, we decided to keep things collaborative through to the end: Each student picked one scene to edit, after which we cut the entire story together. At the end of the week, when we screened our short film for parents, I think everybody was happily surprised to see how much they’d been able to accomplish as a group in just one short week. The experience was a great one, and I look forward to having more like it this summer!

Learn more about DMA Teen Film Courses and Summer Computer Camps

There are a couple reasons why one of my first blogs is about DMA’s Action Sports & Media Combination Courses (Skate Boarding & Filmmaking / Surfing & Filmmaking). The first reason is that this is where I got my start with filmmaking. Upon Graduating from the UCSC film school, my first completed film was a 30 min snowboard and skateboarding film. I traveled to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado to premiere the film. It was such an incredible feeling to have my work up on the big screen and evaluated by my peers. The second reason why I write about these courses is because that is what I am working on right now. In fact I my house is covered with snow and I have been getting some amazing footage.

The idea came up for these courses when Dave Livingston – DMA’s Director of Instruction – asked me if there were any filmmaking courses that I wish I could have taken in college that weren’t available. Immediately, I thought it would be so cool to have taken a video production class with curriculum that taught actions sports cinematography and editing techniques. The classes were born and they have been a huge success. In these classes we teach students how to plan, shoot, edit, and produce their own action sports videos. At the end of each course the students even get the chance to premiere their film on the ā€œbig screenā€, in front of classmates, family, and friends. It is really just awesome what they accomplish in 5 days while having so much fun!

Check out a couple of videos that one talented student Evan created while taking one of our DMA’s Action Sports & Media Combination Courses.



Until next time,

Travis Schlafmann

DMA Instructor/ Cinematographer & Editor

Learn more about Digital Media AcademyĀ Film Camps for TeensĀ in this video. See what teen students are saying about DMA summer technology camp programs.Ā DMA summer camp students get the opportunity to act as a producer, screenwriter, actor / actress, director, scout, art director, digital video editor, and more! This is a truly amazing tech learning experience.Ā 

Digital Media Academy also offers similarĀ Film Camps for KidsĀ andĀ Filmmaking Courses for Pro AdultsĀ in addition to theĀ Teen Film Camps.

Learn more at http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org

Make a skateboarding film at DMA teen summer computer and technology camps! This is a great way to learn how to make a skateboard video. Watch the experiences of actual students that filmed and editing video of professional skateboarders during the Skate and Filmmaking class at Digital Media Academy. This same course is offered this summer at many prestigious university locations in the United States and Canada.

Learn more about the Skate & Film Camp on the course page. Watch theĀ video below to see actual students’ experiences at the DMA’s summer camp programs…


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