Posts Tagged movie making


As one of the main characters on Terminator 4, nine-year old Jada-Grace Gordy has had extensive experience in front of the camera. She recently, however, came to Digital Media Academy’s Adventures in Movie Making and Special Effects course at UCLA because she wanted to learn what happens behind the scenes.

Working with DMA instructor and UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television graduate Anthony Puente, Jada-Grace has learned what it means to be a storyboard writer, a camera operator, a director and an editor, in addition to being an actress. As she explained to me, “I have learned that directors have to be really specific, and that actors and actresses really have to listen to their directors!” When asked about her experience learning Final Cut Pro, Apple’s premiere software program for film editing, she said, “It’s harder than I thought! At first I had no idea what I was doing, but now it’s really fun. I think editors have the hardest job because they have to decide what scene they like and don’t like.”

Because of DMA’s partnership with Sony, Jada-Grace has also had an opportunity to work with high-end Sony HDV cameras. When asked about her experience being a camera person, she exclaimed, “camera people really have to know what you’re doing before they start shooting!”

Jada-Grace has taken her learning of the entire movie making industry so seriously that mid-week she asked her instructor Anthony if she could have an “extra” assignment, which she would design herself. As it turns out, her extra assignment is a set of very detailed notes on the different roles of movie making!

We are now in our third week of summer 2009! As of this week, we have four locations up and running across the country, including Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA and The University of Texas at Austin. The University of California at Irvine ran for two weeks, June 22 – July 3, focusing on filmmaking courses for both teens and adults. Next week, four more locations will be launched, including Brown University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego (UCSD) and our first ever international location, The University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

DMA students include adults, teens and kids as young as seven years old. At each age group, a variety of courses are offered, including movie making, video game creation, robotics, animation and web design. Summer 2009 also features several new courses, including Adventures in Cartoon and Comic Creation for kids ages 9-13 and Junior Adventures in Digital Art and Movie Making for kids ages 7-9. Among our new teen courses is the very popular Music and Video Production course, taught in conjunction with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. Students in this class use the latest audio, video and music gear to create their own songs and music videos! Stay tuned for more features on each of these new courses!

All DMA courses are project based, so students are going home every Friday with their very own portfolio of project work. In the coming weeks, we will feature many of these projects, as well as profile some of the students whose creativity is filling college campuses nationwide!

All courses are taught by professionals with classroom teaching experience and/or experience in the industry, so students are learning from the “masters” themselves! Please check out our instructor biographies to learn more about our teaching staff.

Spots are still available at several locations. Please call 866-656-3342 for course availability!


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    Locations in the United States and in Canada. For Adults: Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area; Digital Media Academy Training Center; Northern and Southern California; University of California, San Diego; University of Texas at Austin; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For Kids & Teens: Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area; in Northern California; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, San Diego; University of Texas at Austin; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts;University of Chicago - Illinois; University of British Columbia; George Washington University in Washington DC; Drexel University in Philadelphia; Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.