Posts Tagged film
Film Camp for Teens : Create, Write, Act, Produce, and Edit
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 20th, 2009 by Philip Harding
Make a movie at Digital Media Academy Film Camp for Teens!
I have had the pleasure of being able to attend, direct, assist, and co-instruct all levels of DMA’s filmmaking programs, but I just wanted to talk about the youth film camp programs for a moment. We’ve seen a lot of girls very interested in the film industry and these film camps. Both guys and girls get the chance to work in a real world film set and get a taste of the movie making action. Teen and youth students get the opportunity to create their own movie from scratch during the 5 day summer camp. The class starts with brainstorming creative story ideas and actually writing a movie script. Throughout the week-long bootcamp style filmmaking course students are able to write the script, act in the scenes, scout out shooting locations, shoot the film, edit the video with a pro level app like Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and produce their own DVD to take home. What a week!
DMA students get to act as a producer, screenwriter, actor / actress, director, scout, art director, digital video editor, and more! This is a truly amazing experience.
I have a lot of great memories across many of our university campuses with a green screen, mic boom, or extra camera trying to get in one last video shoot for the film camp. These film courses are always fun and creative. The learning experience is hands-on and directly duplicates being on the set making, acting, and directing a Hollywood picture. The camera equipment, audio equipment, lighting kits, and computer & software technology is always the best available.
Digital Media Academy also offers similar Film Camps for Kids and Filmmaking Courses for Pro Adults in addition to the Teen Film Camps.
![[Bloglines]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Furl]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/furl.png)
![[Google]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[Mixx]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/mixx.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Newsvine]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/newsvine.png)
![[Propeller]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/propeller.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Squidoo]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/squidoo.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Video Compression for Producers and Editors : How Big is It?
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 19th, 2009 by Philip Harding
Written by Jeff Sobel of the John Lennon Bus
A video producer often needs to be able to estimate the size of a video file before that video has been recorded, imported or exported. Do you need a magic crystal ball to predict how large a video file will be before you hit that Export button? Nope. You just need a 5th grader’s grasp of basic math. Here’s how:
Let’s take the example of exporting a video using Apple’s Compressor which comes standard with Final Cut Studio 2.
The first thing you should know is that digital video is encoded at a certain datarate, commonly called the bitrate. Higher bitrates generally produce better quality video (less “pixelation” or graininess) but will create larger files. You need to be sure that you choose a bitrate that’s high enough to achieve satisfactory quality but not so high that the video can’t be streamed on the web, downloaded in a reasonable amount of time, emailed, or however you intend to get it to your audience. Compressor has presets which are great starting points for making this decision.
The screenshot below shows Compressor’s stock presets for iPod, iPhone, and AppleTV:
You’ll see that there are two different presets for iPod/iPhone. The 1st is “h.264 video @ 600kbps” and the 2nd is “h.264 video @ 1500kbps”. Now, it’s safe to assume that the 2nd preset will produce better quality video, but how big will the files be? Let say we have a 2min long video and we’re hoping to compress it to a small enough filesize to be able to email it. Will the 600kbps setting do that for us? Let’s figure it out.
The 1st thing you need to know is that “600kbps” stands for “600 kilobits per second”. Now, we’re all pretty used to hearing about kilobytes, megabytes, even terabytes. But what’s a kilobit? A bit is the smallest piece of data there is. We represent bit with a lowercase b and byte with an uppercase B. All you need to know is:
There are 8 bits in a byte.
There are 1024 bits in a kilobit.
There are 1024 kilobits in a kilobyte.
There are 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte.
It’s not nearly as complicated as it might seem at first. It’s just like measurements you make in a kitchen. You know, 16oz in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon, etc…
So let’s figure out how big our 2min video is going to be after we compress it using the 600kbps preset in Compressor:
600kbps / 8 = 75 kilobytes per second
75KB/s * 60 = 4500 kilobytes per minute
4500KB/m / 1024 = 4.4 megabytes per minute
Our 2min video is going to be about 9megabytes when exported with this preset. Small enough that you might be able to email it.
Now what if we compressed it using the AppleTV preset? That’s a 5mbps bitrate (5 megabits per second) so:
5mbps * 1024 = 5120 kilobits per second
5120kbps / 8 = 640 kilobytes per second
640KB/s * 60 = 38,400KB per minute
38,400KB / 1024 = 37.5 megabytes per minute
At this setting our 2min video will be about 75 megabytes. Much larger. But it’s going to look much better as well, even on an HD TV.
In our next installment we’ll talk about how you can estimate how much disk space you’ll need before capturing or importing your footage from a video camera.
Skate + Film Camp : Make a Skateboard Movie at DMA!
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 19th, 2009 by Philip Harding
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 the video below to see actual students’ experiences at the DMA’s summer camp programs…
Digital Filmmaking Bootcamp @ Stanford University
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 18th, 2009 by Travis
Last summer the Digital Media Academy offered a brand new filmmaking course and I was honored that they had chosen me to teach the class. The course was Digital Filmmaking Bootcamp and it was a huge success. We wanted to create a class where students could come in and learn every aspect of filmmaking in five action packed days. That’s exactly what we did and it resulted in one of the best screenings in any of my closing DMA film festivals.
The typical student that enrolls in Digital Filmmaking Bootcamp comes in with a little or no filmmaking experience, but leaves with a movie that they shot, edited, and compressed for DVD and web. We shoot with professional Sony HD cameras and edit with screaming fast Macs on Final Cut Pro. In fact, at times I found myself jealous that my students have better equipment to learn with, than the equipment I have at my studio to produce content with 
.
Before teaching the class, I knew it would be a busy 5 days but I had no idea how much fun I would have teaching it. When the screening came we had 20 students with 20 amazing films to watch. It was an incredibly rewarding experience to watch students learn how to plan, shoot, edit, and distribute their films in such a short amount of time. I invite you to watch a couple of the videos that I posted from this class.
Both of these videos were created from students that had no experience shooting or editing. They are definitely two different genres but both videos are an amazing success for students with no prior experience.
You can also check out the Teen Filmmaking Bootcamp Courses geared specifically to teens or the Kids Film & Movie Making Courses.
Till next time,
Travis Schlafmann
DMA Instructor/Cinematographer & Editor
HD and Blu-ray Quality Movies Getting Too Real?
Digital Media Academy News + Events | February 17th, 2009 by Philip Harding
There I am standing in front of the most beautiful high definition audio and visual setup money can buy. I have completely lost reality of where I am. I have totally forgotten what I am doing inside an electronics store. I am surrounded with the televisions, computers, cameras, gadgets and only the latest technology (at the best prices I’m told), but none of that matters to me now. I have completely lost touch with reality. I am completely transfixed with the 60″+ flat screen, crisp surround sound system with the super 1200 watt subwoofer, and the high definition blu-ray player in front of me. It seems nothing can suck me out of this odd technology trance I have been sucked into.
For a moment I feel as though I am a real pirate in the Caribbean on board with Captain Jack and the crew. I get kind of grossed out with Davy Jones squirming tentacles. Ewww. I never noticed his mouth moved like that when he talked! I have to turn away, but my eyes become glued to another 65″ flat plasma screen. Then I am suddenly on the back of a funny looking dragon flying down into a huge canyon. As silly as it sounds, I was momentarily scared. Then I stop and realize the 3d dragon looks…. fake. Lame. I turn to another huge LCD flat-screen to get pulled into an amazing live concert. Now this is great! The crowd is screaming. The music is pumping out of the awesome surround sound speakers, the lights are flashing. I feel like I am inside a Rock Band video game. I feel like I am on the front row at the concert…. and all of a sudden I realize how scratched and ugly Sting’s guitar is. Actually, the whole group looks really old. Look how much he is sweating. OK. That’s enough.
Then, all of a sudden I am pulled out of my technology trance and out of the home video and audio department. I need to go find the Apple computers. Do they have those new 17″ MacBook Pro laptops yet?
As I stroll back down the large aisles I begin to think about how quickly technology is moving. Can designers, digital artists, 3d animators, filmmakers, audio technicians, and creative programmers keep up? You better bring your best 3d models and animated characters if your viewers are going to be critiquing them on a ginormous flat screen TV with the highest of high definition disc players.
Think about it. I was snapped out of the movie by thinking about how fake the 3d character looked in the movie. If the the movie had been on a low resolution, old-school setup, I might have been able to pass over the poorly rendered and animated polygons. I wouldn’t have noticed. I’m just saying….
It’s time to flex your creative muscle at Digital Media Academy. Get in some of the computer courses this summer at any of the prestigious summer locations.
