Digital Movie Making - Not Drama Class

I have changed the DMM format. We are discussing only film, pix, video, animation, modeling, and all the publishing aspects in MS Movie Maker. We are not filming and then editing our film. This means we are spending more time on the tools and techniques of amateur movie making.

First session, we built commercials from 3D models and pictures. We incorporated SketchUp as well as yahoo images, Last FM, MS Movie Maker, Audacity, and started to discuss CamStudio. The kids really enjoyed the session after they became comfortable with all the different applications. Many of them had never used any of the above. Also, we had some importing issues and we had to bring images into MS Paint. This was a new tool as well for most. I am concerned that students are not using these tools in the classroom!

Second session, we are discussing animation and we'll be importing clips created by other students in Fluxtime into our movies. We are then going to send the clips to CCPL and see if we can connect them to our website.

Video Game Creation Sessions One and Two Notes

In the first session of video game creation, ages 13-18, we created a simple click game with points, walls, added a maze, and customized the game at the end of the session. The students were very adept at this session and created wonderful games with very imaginative endings.

In the second session, we used a game created in Mid Heights as a base. http://sites.google.com/site/digitalanimationforkids/course-materials

We then created our own backgrounds from jpeg images found on Yahoo images to add to our rooms. The students were also tasked to find the error in the game, which they did almost immediately. The error is corrected by adding another room or level to the game. They each had lots of fun making the backgrounds and loved making many different rooms. The door portal to each room was easy to understand and replicate. The best example of adding 'bad' guys to the game came from creating objects that moved immediately after opening the game, assigning collision, and assigning a negative point systemt to them. Some of the kids enjoyed redesigning the sprites as well.

Students really responded to these points of class:

• Adding Resources, Create Background, Load Background from Jpeg saved to desktop
• Fixing error
• Customizing and adding rooms
• Loved the Pokemon angle

Points for Session Three should include more research into Japanese gaming themes. How to create our own Pokemon games?