Welcome back to the youth blog! Lots and lots of great things have happened since the last post. The West perfected two black and white videos. The acting, camera work was done flawlessly. They even wanted to throw in “scratches” and a “dirt” filter to mimic the time-frame. This group is currently rocking out to the PSA assignments. Each group has to make one “serious” PSA ie: smoking is bad, and one “funny” PSA “eating yellow pickles will turn you into an oompa loompa”. The serious ones will be shown on WCTV.
The North is going above and beyond as well on this. They decided to whip out the green screen and mix that in. We’ll be taking you on an adventurous train ride captivating the audience with a great murder/mystery comedy! We’ll be filming this project this week; can’t wait!
Last Saturday was a full-house here as SP-10 brought down the HOUSE! or studio I should say. The kids tore up the pop quiz section put on by “Patrick the plant” and it came down to the final question before our winner was crowned. Meg made amazing top hats and danced a jig. The group also mastered the concept of buoyancy as they made aluminum water crafts that were able to withstand all the leprechauns gold coins. Great Episode!
-brandon
Both schools successfully completed their respected kindness videos with flying colors! I’m very impressed - great job! Both schools took the time to interview several students during their recess times, classroom and lunch times. The dedication for these groups is phenomenal.
After having school vacation last week, the North finished their “job interviews” and will be watching them this week and then preparing as a whole group for the “charlie chaplin”. For those of you who don’t know, Charlie Chaplin was arguably one of the best “movie stars” during the silent film era, thus creating the next task for the group, a silent black and white film! should be fun!
The West has finished scripting and storyboarding their black and white videos and will be filming this week when we meet. We have a story about a bus driver who is reckless and endangers all the passengers involving a fire, chase scene and pitchforks! while the other group teamed up to make a short involving high-tech kitten robots and a mad scientist!
Saturday Playhouse 10 has decided that since we’re no longer in “2010” the time has come to revamp our name! Meg and I will put our noggins together and release a new name shortly. We finished up our January and February episodes and those are currently airing as well as being shown online. The March episode will be filmed on the 10th. The theme is St. Patricks day, and everyone’s favorite animal, the Alpaca!
-brandon
Welcome back to another edition of the youth blog! WCTV Explorers wrapped up an exciting first session right before the holidays! Roughly 25 video projects were finished. Projects include green screen, infomercials, interviewing and experimental! The program will begin back at the West/North later this week!
Saturday Playhouse 10 wrapped up the 2011 year with an hour long holiday special that’s currently airing, so be on the look out for it. We will be meeting this weekend as well to kick off 2012 the right way!
All of the explorers projects form the first session along with a slideshow will be aired on WCTV within the next week - enjoy them!
-brandon
The North and West schools have just finished up there third project this past week - the “Experimental” projects. The sole purpose of this project is to expand the creativity from past projects. Students were strongly encouraged to try different camera angles and techniques and film ordinary classroom items such as a ruler or whiteboard and think of effects/music to make them look better! This gives all the students a better understanding and grasp on what is available to them in creating ANY video project.
The students will have smoke, lightning, fire, explosions, color correction, static etc. for effects in some, maybe all of their projects! Each student has picked what they want for all their shots. I will begin editing them very shortly!
The West has started preparing for next weeks shoot - Green Screen! kids will love this activity and showed their enthusiasm during the prep period today.
The middle school wrapped up their infomercial prepping and will film their projects next week! Saturday Playhouse 10 meets THIS Saturday for part one of our holiday episode. Filming this week is the holiday quiz, turkey ghost hunt, apple search and a holiday skit! should be another stellar episode!
That’s all for now, check out the youth vimeo links for the past video explorer projects and Saturday Playhouse episodes!
and remember… continuity is very important while making a video!
-brandon
Last Tuesday’s explorers were off but we’re ready to go this week! The Middle School hopes to finish up their prepping and start filming their first project, while the West is closing in on finishing their second project! The North will also be finishing up their second project this week.
The second project at both schools is creating infomercials! Each infomercial is for a product that “in theory” hasn’t been mass produced and is already in your local wal-mart stores. We’ve had everything from bacon flavored ice cream, special cat food, duck drinks, gum that makes you younger to a never-ending candle! The kids have really let their imagination run wild. Each group has come up with two infomercials.
Saturday Playhouse met this past weekend and has decided to make one awesomely-massive gigantic holiday episode combining the forces of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and all the other winter holidays! We planned out an amazing amount of fun activities for the kids and can’t wait to do it!
The latest episode of Saturday Playhouse will be up and running starting next week! it should be a spooky one!
That’s all for now, everyone make sure you bought your snow tires and have your ice scrapers ready to go. Winter is unfortunately coming.
-brandon
Welcome back everyone, (the three people that follow this blog) even though I like to think everyone reads this! After all, this blog is about your children putting their creative little minds into motion AND it being on the TV.
My middle school bunch met today (Tuesdays 1:40-2:40), three returning students from last year, lost a couple to the high school! They jumped into their first assignments with great enthusiasm. One group is doing a funny spoof with sad music in the background, while the other group is making a baking segment lead by “chef cookie”, “professor pork chops” and “protege pancake”. Sounds like a healthy fix of fun and ridculousness to me!
The North (Thursdays 1:30-230) sketched out their skits last week and are fully prepared to engage in a video frenzy Thursday afternoon, so be on the look out! Headlining that afternoon is a 1934 (might have made that up) mystery involving two gumshoes, a teacher and a janitor. This from what I hear has a bit of a twist, so be on your toes! The second project is “Christmas Strikes Back” this of course will have lightsabres, wookies, ewoks, just kidding, but how awesome would that be? An unfortunate event has taken place and Santa is determined to get to the bottom of it in a heated interview!
The West (Tuesdays 3-4pm) filmed three of four projects today. We had oompa loompas, crazy halloween mischief and a whole lot of questions about pets, colors and names! Next week we will finish the final project about a store that simply refuses to sell duck food to an owner! The students also have been preparing their skits/scripts/ideas for the next project! This one will have the groups come up with two products (that haven’t been invented yet) and make their own infomercials! this will make them be creative, think outside the box, think of logos, scripts, some type of music and colors they wish to have!
Last but certainly not least, SP10 met this past Saturday and we’re prepared to bring out all the ghouls, ghosts and goblins in a terrifying Halloween special! All kids are encouraged to dress up in costumes (as will meg and I) and I promise I won’t wear that ridiculous pumpkin as a hat this time. The show segments will test their wits on halloween knowledge, decorating mini pumpkins, graffiti, worlds worst and my favorite segment, Science Experiments! This kids will be making lava bottles filled with nifty things and food coloring to help them turn out a little festive (or at least that’s the idea)
That’s all for now, I applaud you all who made it this far and read the novel. Just call me Charles Dickens.
-brandon
It’s weird writing this with shorts, sandals and the A/C on. I feel it’s July again! Although by the recent foliage that’s occurring one can see that fall is happening… which means… Video Explorers and SP-10 are back and ready to roll.
We have already filmed our Season Premier at the end of September for Saturday Playhouse, which will be airing within the next couple days. We welcome aboard Jon and Lizzie to join last years cast of Matt, Sam and Meg. This episode was based around “Nintendo games/systems”. It included trivia, smart snacks, arts and crafts, a review and worlds worst - Doesn’t get much better than that to kick off Season Two of SP-10!
Video Explorers club is back in action this week as well. I will be taking on two more schools (three total) Tuesday I met with the West Intermediate student council kids and we’ve started the first project. The kids were split up into groups and have already scripted their first assignment. This first assignment is called “In-Camera Editing” What that means, is basically they will hit start/stop for each cut. This will show the students how important it is to carefully script their future tasks! It will also give them an opportunity to learn basic camera functions and how to react while being on camera! This assignment is how I start all the Explorers clubs, so the Middle School and North Intermediate.
Stay tuned for the showing of SP-10 and remember: The Nintendo Wii taken apart, has 87 pieces.
-Brandon
Saturday Playhouse welcomes two more kids to their program! We are in the midst of our April/Easter special. This past Saturday the studio was the location of a massive easter egg hunt! All kids looked high and low for their specific color of eggs packed with chocolate candies and cadbury eggs! (sorry parents)
The children also took part in an arts and crafts segment of decorating hollowed out eggs. some drew, some colored and some even smudged the marker ink to give it more of a “dipped” feel.
The second part of the show will be filmed this coming Saturday at 1030! This episode will be an extra long super duper episode when it’s finalized.
The kids also learned that there will be a big secret pizza party for all their hard work over the year after the conclusion of our May Season Finale Episode. Have no fear, Saturday Playhouse will be back in the Fall!
Despite, what you normally know, bad is good when it comes to experimental projects! The students creatively shot random objects around the classroom and wrote down several effects and music they wanted and I creatively put them into action and completed their vision! All three came out incredibly unique and can be seen here:
http://vimeo.com/groups/videoexplorers/videos
Also you can view the black and white silent films the students made over the course of the weeks as well!
Yesterday the students started working on their PSA’s, most are funny, but each group is required to make one “real PSA” ie: anti-bullying, anti smoking.
And remember, whenever you’re watching a movie or television… and you hear a “fire burning” sound… the audio you’re hearing… is really probably just eggs or bacon cooking, not a real burning sound at all. interesting ehh?
-brandon
It feels like the egg timer on winter finally went off last Friday because since then, the weather has been great! Sure today it’s raining, but think of the alternatives we’ve had over the past few months.
Anyways, video projects. SO! the explorers have been busy working on their newest task at hand, which is 100% experimental. That means they have free reign to shoot anything they’d like within the classroom. That includes any and all camera angles, objects, etc. I’ve also told them I can do whatever they choose in Post-Production. They can change colors, speed up/slow down clips, add layers, the list goes on and on and I’m excited to put their vision in full swing!
Saturday Playhouse met on, well, Saturday, and we showed those interested how things work behind the scenes! They were able to get a basic idea of how we load graphics, change cameras, audio levels, “switcher dissolves” and we discussed how we put together all the graphics and titles in during the Post-Production stage. All in all a very successful morning.
All kids are still encouraged to come Saturday mornings to participate in the fun. With this weather getting better, it opens the door for new activities!
