Wednesday, February 27, 2013

NYC Educator: My Filmmaking Career

NYC Educator: My Filmmaking Career:


My Filmmaking Career

This year, I was asked to do a project with my kids. I chose to have them make films, with the cooperation of MyBlock NYC, which I highly recommend. I made a short video introducing my block as that my school was on, and introduced the students to people in the building I thought could help them. I then told them to make their own videos, and let some of them borrow the ancient flip cameras our school owns.

I thought it would be easy. I edited my video on a Mac using iMovie, never having used it before, and figured it would be a snap for the kids, who are technologically light years ahead of me. However, when I finally managed to swap the trailer for a computer lab, I found nothing but problems. The machines were slower than Michael Bloomberg giving teachers a fair contract. I managed to get one of the tech teachers to help. She suggested we work with stills rather than moving images so as to make things move faster.

I spent a week dealing with technical problems, and