Lights, Camera, Learn!

You've got a master's degree worth of filmmaking knowledge sitting unlearned in your DVD collection! Don't believe me? Watch a DVD of your favorite movie with the commentary track. I will eat my blog if you don't learn something fascinating about how filmmakers think and work. I always try to direct educators to cool DVD extras that can help them and their students better understand the filmmaking process. One of my favorites is a storyboarding skills building exercise using a DVD of Disney/Pixar's MONSTERS INC. Like most of the Disney DVD releases of late, MONSTERS INC. is packed with all kinds of great extras. The Storyboard to Final comparisons are excellent for helping students of all ages get comfortable creating very quick storyboards. Here's how you do it. What you need: Both disks from the MONSTERS INC. set. & DVD player Blank storyboards. OR notebook paper folded in 6ths. Document camera OR camcorder connected to a monitor or projector. First: What ...

Baz Luhrman gave the Bard top billing in his 1996 adaptation WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO + JULIET to signal his desire to be faithful to the original text. The finished work, some have called MTV meets Shakespeare, looks, feels and sounds like an ‘of the moment’ polished contemporary work. Much of that has to do with elements of production design, music and editing. The arresting visual style is second only to the characterization and performance by the cast. The conventions of studio filmmaking concern them selves with issues of economics in an era of market capitalism, those conventions impact all aspects of the filmmaking process from the writing and production of film to of course issues of casting. By 1996 Leonardo performances in BASKETBALL DIARIES and THIS BOYS LIFE earned him solid credits as a serious actor but this superstar launch from TITANIC was still in the future. Claire Danes was primarily a TV actress with an emerging film career. These two were young, attractive and o...

Perhaps the most prolific reporter and booster of the AFI ScreenEd program in the blogosphere was Joe Brennan on his Digital Storytelling blog over at Discovery Education. The Lights, Camera, Education section of Joe's blog does a great job of outlining his early adoption and training with the Screen Educaton Process and his expert review of the teacher resources materials to his coverage of the last AFI presetation at NECC in San Antonio earlier this year, which includes a link to a video of my entire presentation . Joe is an inspiring educator, Apple ADE, Discovery DEN Star and a good friend. Have you seen the profile AFI did of him? I look forward to being fodder for many many more of Joe's blog posts in the future. Here's to you Brother Joe!

I'm starting the new Lights, Camera, Learn! blog by re-posting the blog entries I made for the official AFI Screen Education blog. Thu 1 Nov 2007 We get all kinds of inquiries at the Screen Ed Center from educators and students with basic filmmaking & equipment questions or for tips in using the LIGHTS, CAMERA, EDUCATION! resource, even sometimes about the AFI 100 Years/100 Movies series. Occasionally we get a question that gives us pause, and also allows the staff here to reflect on why we love movies! Like this question from Charles, an 11th grader in Conneticut who asks: “I recently got into a heated debate with several students on which movie was better. Pulp Fiction or The Princess Bride . I was amazed to see how many people stand behind The Princess Bride. Could you please end our debate by telling me what movie is better and why? I still can’t believe this is a real topic of discussion. ” -Charles E. I hope we never stop arguing and debating about our favorite ...

I'm starting the new Lights, Camera, Learn! blog by re-posting the blog entries I made for the official AFI Screen Education blog. Thu 8 Nov 2007 At a White House ceremony, President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Harper Lee. Bush praised Lee’s 1961 book, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD as a “gift to the entire world” and one that “has influenced the character of our country for the better. Mockingbird, a staple on the reading lists of thousands of schools nationwide, won Lee a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The 1962 film adaptation directed by Robert Mulligan and staring Gregory Peck won 3 Academy Awards in 1962 including Best Actor for Mr. Peck and Best Adapted Screenplay for Horton Foote. To Kill a Mockingbird has also made frequent appearances on many of the AFI 100 years 100 Movies lists. It is # 25 on the all-time top 100 American movies, #2 on the 100 most inspiring films, the music composed by Franz Waxman was ranked #17 as best film score and Peck’s Atticus Finch ...

I'm starting the new Lights, Camera, Learn! blog by re-posting the blog entries I made for the official AFI Screen Education blog. Mon 5 Nov 2007 Question: When do we usually see video cameras? Weddings, births, birthday parties, school and sporting events come to mind. Now ask yourself how often you actually sit down and watch those videos. How often can you get someone else to watch? Are these videos interesting? Do all those long continuous shots, wild moves and dizzying zooms make for compelling viewing? This ‘default mode’ for shooting video create the visual equivalent of a run-on sentence. This is because most people use their home video cameras to document an event rather than tell a story . The irony of this situation is that most people living in western culture during the last 50 years have learned to decode and understand a nearly continuous and increasingly sophisticated stream of visual information. Visual language, with its unique vocabulary and grammar, is ef...