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News from HQ
Music-Making with Logic Pro
DMA Locations
Science Camps at GWU: Building A New Center of Research
News from HQ
Digital Media Academy Celebrates 10 Years of Excellence
News from HQ
Documentary Filmmaking : Learn How to Make a Documentary Film
News from HQ
Careers in the Film, Music, and Digital Media
News from HQ
Apple Motion Special Effects Tip with Instructor Mark Spencer
Filmmaking
DMA Studios Expands OfferingNews from HQ
Prestigious Summer Camps at Swarthmore College
DMA Locations
Science Camps at GWU: Building A New Center of Research
Industry News & Events
New Xbox: Features & Release Date
Industry News & Events
DMA & AAA Reality Games to Offer Free "Echo's Revenge" eBookNews from HQ
DMA Campers Get Free “Echo” Ebook
News from HQ
Kool-Aid Man CGI Makeover: Updating a Classic
Winner of a Week of Free Summer Camp Announced How-To
DMA HOW-TO: Source Filmmaker, Part 2
Music Production
Dr. Dre Music School: A New Program at USC
Posts Tagged Summer Camp
Meet the Next Great Engineers
DMA Success Stories by Phill Powell
Name: Koa L., Kaipo L.
Age: 10, 8
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Future Occupation: Scientist, Musician (drummer), Architect or Designer
Course: Adventures in Science & Engineering
Campus: UCLA
Summer camp is an experience that only gets better when you bring family and friends along. Take, for example, these two brothers who attended Digital Media Academy’s tech camp at UCLA in 2012.
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Koa and Kaipo both spent a week at a brand new kids camp based around science and engineering. DMA’s tech camps support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) skill sets, and that’s great news to parents since the Department of Labor estimates there will be 1.2 million STEM jobs available in the next 5 years.
What isn’t such great news is that there aren’t enough skilled graduates to fill those jobs!
This is where DMA comes in. We help provide kids and teens the tools to make STEM subjects not only interesting but a possible career path. For kids like Koa and Kaipo, they get the real-world experience—and get to show off what they’ve learned to friends and family at the end of the week. We caught up these two aspiring engineers after their DMA summer:
What do you want to be?
Koa: “When I grow up, I might be a drummer, an architect or a designer.”
Kaipo: “Someday I want to be a scientist because I want to create something useful.”
What did you learn at DMA and what did you enjoy about the Adventures in Science & Engineering camp?
Koa: “I learned how circuits work, Bernoulli’s Principle of Flight, and Programming. You know, science and stuff. I also learned cartooning, like how comics are set up and how to create basic animation. Another thing I learned was architecture, where I did stuff like make a bridge out of popsicle sticks and design my dream house on a website.”
Kaipo: “My favorite part was solar energy because we got to learn about how sun beams power solar panels.”
How did DMA inspire you?
Koa: I play with LEGOs (at home) and build on Minecraft®. I got inspired by designing my dream house. I want to be an architect some day.”
Kaipo: “DMA inspired me to be a scientist because I did a lot of fun stuff in science and engineering.”
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What was your most memorable camp moment?
Koa: “My favorite moment was when we built solar-powered cars and we learned about solar energy. It was really fun and I especially enjoyed racing the solar cars!”
Kaipo: “My favorite time was when we built water rockets. It was fun to make them and shoot them.”
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Are you interested in attending DMA camp this coming summer?
Koa: “Yes!”
Kaipo: “We want to come back to UCLA.”
What DMA program will you take this time?
Koa: “I want to take the Adventures in Science & Engineering program again.”
Kaipo: “3D Video Game Creation.”
We’re excited that Koa and Kaipo are returning to DMA. Concepts like solar-powered cars and engineering don’t have to be out of reach to kids. In fact, they’re more accessible than ever. DMA offers a variety of STEM-related camps and courses that will inspire the future engineer in your home.
DMA’s Next Generation Music Camp
News from HQ by Seamus Harte
Kids love technology and Digital Media Academy gives them an opportunity to get hands-on experience with it every summer. Kids aged 6-12 or teens aged 12-18 can make a movie using professional grade HD videocameras or make video games using the same tools as award-winning game creators currently working in the games industry.
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At DMA’s technology camp (which is held on the campus of prestigious universities like Harvard, UCLA or the University of Toronto), students learn what it takes to make professional grade digital media.
Making Beats
In the Digital Audio, Music & Beat Production program, teens explore the process of making music. Everything from making bass lines to modifying sounds and using those sounds to create catchy melodies is covered. Starting with the basics of recording and editing, students learn the concepts of songwriting and arrangement.
Tyler Winick is an instructor for DMA, in the off season, he’s also a producer for the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and has worked with music artists like Will.i.am and the Black Eyed Peas. “I love working with major artists, but I love working with kids at DMA too.
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Kids imaginations and their outlook on this world is so refreshing in comparison to the box most adults put their brains in.”
This summer Tyler is teaching Digital Audio, Music & Beat Production at DMA’s Stanford University location. “I enjoy the fact that this course shakes your brain to think of everything from producing music to writing lyrics. I think the campers are going to have a ball and come up with some really creative projects.”
Technology and Sunshine Meet At Summer Camp
News from HQ by Arash Afshar
Technology and Sunshine Meet at San Diego Summer Camp
By Arash Afshar
Imagine exploring cutting edge media technologies such as robotics, 3D modeling, animation, video production, game design, graphics and more from top rated instructors in beautiful San Diego. The Digital Media Academy Summer Camp at UCSD offers students this in a unique, one of a kind learning experience! Read more
Summer is fast approaching and in sunny Los Angeles that means more time to do the things your kids love. Digital Media Academy courses at UCLA provide the perfect mixture of fun and education! Families looking for a summer sleepaway residential camp in California love the University of California (UCLA) American summer camp experience!
The addition of some great new teen programs such as our Action Sports & Media Combination courses allows our teen camp participants to enjoy skateboarding while learning practical skills in filmmaking. Digital Media Academy’s Action Sports Filmmaking and Skate Boarding and Filmmaking camp at UCLA will also give your child a competitive edge in the job market!
L.A. Action
With the ever-growing industry in Action Sports in Southern California, Digital Media Academy at UCLA will be able to provide an advantage to anyone who is thinking of pursuing a career in that field. It’s a great way to get started on your new career choice using some of the hottest technologies. Students will be able to learn cutting edge cinematography techniques and editing footage that your teen films while they visit a real life action sports event.
Infomercial Parody
News from HQ by Instructor
By Lisa Ratner, Lead Instructor
As I prepare for Summer 2011 Stanford Filmmaking Adventures Summer Camp I am reminded of the successes of 2009. The project that always yielded the most creative and witty videos was the “Commercial.” The students’ task was to select a product and sell it to their audience. (An assignment quite familiar to professionals in the media world). Yet at Digital Media Academy the demand to produce high bucks is replaced with the enjoyable pressure to create high laughs at our End of Summer Camp Film-Festival.
First, we reviewed the 4 stages of film-making: Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production, and Exhibition. This enabled the students to really plan all aspects of the project before they filmed — an essential skill. Then the brainstorming began. The costume box was transformed from neat & tidy to the delightful whirlwind of a creative mess. Debates over wide-angle shots versus close-ups competed with the sounds of furious typing at the keyboard so the script would be ready in time for the production phase.
“Camera ready?” the assistant director calls out.
“Ready!” the cinematographer answers.
“Actors Ready?”
“Ready!” pipes a lion-dressed “salesman”
A kid from the web design class sneaks in to watch the action.
“Camera Rolling”
“Action!”
To me, the most fulfilling thing about being a film instructor is seeing the kids come out of their shells. When they perform in front of the camera, even the ones who seem “too cool” or “shy” simply can’t hold back and they shine brilliantly. I can see the surprise on their parents’ faces during the film festival. It is truly exciting.
Since last summer at DMA, I’ve been producing video tours and websites for a real estate company. I’ve been itching to return to DMA to see what kind of parodies these kids can make of video tours! It’s going to be a blast!
Do your kids long to be in film production? Check out film school with Digital Media Academy this summer!
Stanford University Summer Camp – A Teaching Assistant’s Perspective
Written by Kenneth Chan
Last summer I had the pleasure of being the Teaching Assistant for four amazing classes at the Digital Media Academy at Stanford University summer camp: Final Cut Pro (300) with Tom Wolsky, Final Cut Studio Integration with Mark Spencer, After Effects CS4 Studio-Advanced Techniques with Betsy Kopmar, and Advanced Web Design Techniques with Sandy Novak. I had my troubleshooting skills tested in these four challenging and fun-filled classes, learned from four awesome and dedicated instructors, and helped four diverse sets of motivated and talented students.
What I love about being a TA are the truly thrilling challenges and learning opportunities that present themselves when troubleshooting student projects. I see my primary role at summer camp as this — to do everything possible to keep kids on track with the teacher’s instruction. When everything in class is going smoothly, I learn a lot by following along with what the instructor is teaching and reinforcing my own knowledge. But where it gets really interesting for me is when a student stumbles into a way to “break” the program or get stuck during a complex project. And if a class has fifteen students, they will often find fifteen different ways to get stuck somewhere along the way. That’s when I get to play the detective and figure out what’s wrong and how to get them back on track. Seeing the smile break out and the sigh of relief from a student who can now continue moving forward in the project is pretty rewarding. Further, I love the partnership I have with the instructor — the more efficient I am at proactively keeping our students on track, the more effectively the instructor can present their lesson material without getting slowed down by unexpected problems on an individual machine. Everybody wins when these goals are achieved.
It may sound funny, but I particularly love it when students run into a new problem that I’ve never seen before. The more bizarre, the better! There is no way I could, by working solely on my own projects, come up with all of the different “problem” conditions that may arise during normal use of these sophisticated software applications. That’s where the students of each class really do me a big favor when they raise their hand and have something “really weird going on” to show me. Often I can inspect their project and quickly spot the step they missed or the keyboard shortcut they need to input to get back on track, but every once in a while, I really get stumped! And for me, that’s where some serious learning and troubleshooting starts. It drives me crazy if I can’t adequately answer a student’s question in class, so I’ll often find myself trying to reproduce the problem on my own and doing online research until I come up with a satisfactory solution. It’s a thrill to be able to wrestle with a mysterious problem, grow to understand the nature of it, and then come up with a viable workaround for it. My expertise in an application grows each time I encounter and troubleshoot a new problem.
Finally, this entry wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention some of the awesome lessons I have learned and the projects I have seen come out of the Digital Media Academy. I’m truly astounded by the personal growth and quality of projects many students have achieved after just one week of instruction at the Digital Media Academy summer camp. Even as a TA at Stanford University summer camp, I love to work on the in-class projects to bolster my experience with the applications, and I thought it would be fun to share a few examples with you here:
This video was created in the Final Cut Pro 300 class.
This animated DVD menu sequence was designed in the Final Cut Studio Integration class.
Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at a future Digital Media Academy summer camp!
Yours Truly,
Kenneth Chan
About Me: When I’m not TA’ing for the Digital Media Academy, I manage the Multimedia Studio and Meyer Tech Desk at Stanford University, a drop-in facility equipped for students and faculty to learn to use image, audio, and video editing tools to realize their creative visions for academic and personal projects. I also teach the Multimedia Production class at Stanford University during the Academic Year, which includes the basics of Photoshop, GarageBand, video production, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and iDVD. You can find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/niftyken
DMA Summer 2009 is Underway!
News from HQ by Margaret Lim
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!
Announcing the Second DMA Camp Fair Free Tuition winner!
Congratulations to Darryl Sanjeant (Dominic) for winning the raffle for free tuition to the Digital Media Academy from our second round of camp fairs! Dominic can choose from our many great courses.
DMA attends many camp fairs across the country. Attendees are able to enter their name for a chance to win a free summer camp course by Digital Media Academy.
Written by Tyler Winick of the John Lennon Bus
The Digital Media Academy (DMA) is a nationally-recognized organization offering hands-on learning experiences in a broad range of digital media technologies. DMA offers summer camps for kids and teens and “Pro-Series” courses for adult-learners. Founded in 2001 by a group from Stanford University, DMA is best known for its premier summer programs hosted at 18 prestigious destination campuses, such as Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of Chicago – just to name a few. In addition to its summer programs, DMA provides on-site training to schools and companies and offers workshops throughout the year at its training facility in Campbell, CA.
I had a great learning experience with DMA!
I had the pleasure of taking some DMA courses last winter and can honestly say that it was an amazing and valuable experience. I learned so much so quickly and was able to immediately apply my knowledge in the classroom and in the field with the John Lennon Bus. For more information you can visit digitalmediaacademy.org
Make a Music Video at Film Camp this Summer! John Lennon Bus
News from HQ by Philip Harding
Written by Brian Rothschild of the John Lennon Bus
Experience the ultimate music video summer camp. Bring your imagination, and leave with the skills you need to create professional music and video projects with ease, from start to finish. The Lennon Bus has teamed up with the Digital Media Academy to provide a new course based on the techniques taught daily on The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. Using the latest audio, video and music gear, you’ll work with a diverse group of talented students and professionals to edit and create original music and videos. Make beats, write a song, record audio, shoot video, edit like the pros and author your own DVD. No experience needed; this course is for anyone interested in learning the basics of music and video creation.
