Occasionally we run short CuriousWorks workshops out at Casula Powerhouse to get young people interested in making video and to provide them with a fun excursion. Yesterday I had 55 girls & boys from Liverpool Public attend, and you can see their first videos below in this post.
Firstly, I play a little ice-breaker game of introductions with the young people to get them to relax and focus. Then we check out the reFILL Film School videos to learn some basic video skills.
Inevitably, we always make the “Ball Game” video in these sessions. Its a simple exercise that allows us to shoot a structured video and edit it in a limited time, as well as covering some of the filmmaking basics like establishing a frame and simple editing.
The edit takes place on a large projected wall, and I work with 4 or 5 of the students to edit the work. This works surprisingly well, everyone is usually quite engaged as they watch their peer edit the video together. Highlights are usually watching bad takes, though. The edit takes place in Final Cut Pro, but we demonstrate it in such a way that it is totally applicable to other editing softwares such as Windows Movie Maker.
If we have time, we put together a little track in Garageband, as the Liverpool kids did, and voila! An introduction to filming & editing as well as some hand on experience completing your video all in 2 hours.