Filmmaking camp turns kids into young Spielbergs
For its 14th summer, local nonprofit Aurora Picture Show will host camps where kids step behind the camera as filmmakers — culminating with a red-carpet-style premiere, complete with paparazzi.
No prior filmmaking experience is needed for the camp, which is open to ages 7 to 15, and Aurora’s Camilo Gonzalez says most campers return for subsequent summers once they’ve experimented with the medium.
Some of the short films have gone on to juried film festivals.
Professional artists and animators teach each weekly session, beginning with basic technical skills. Campers tour the editing areas and animation stations and try out equipment, including lighting and tripods.
They work in teams to pitch their ideas before getting to work on their three- to fiveminute films.
From silly and fun to abstract or political, Gonzalez says film topics come from campers’ own life experiences. “We are showing them what their voice is and how important their stories are,” he says.
“Getting their ideas out of their heads, onto paper and onto a moving image is a really good tool for them to have as a kid in this multisensory world that we live in,” he adds.
One style kids can employ in their filmmaking is stop-motion animation. Digital animation, which is more advanced, is not taught at the camp.
Using objects available in the studio or that they bring from home, kids move items in front of the camera, take pictures, then move the object again to tell a story.
They’ll learn frame rate, composition and other fundamentals.
In postproduction, kids use technology to splice all the images together to create the illusion of movement.
Stop-motion films might feature Claymation, collage elements or objects such as Legos or fruit.
“You can really take any object and bring it to life,” Gonzalez says. “It’s mostly about letting their creativity take the wheel.”
Gonzalez recalls one short in which a strawberry with a face began to eat other strawberries.
In another, “Godzilla’s Day Off,” filmmakers featured a stuffed animal and showed how the monster might relax, depicting him drinking coffee and other everyday acts.
Kids use the same iPads, DSLR cameras, tripods and Go Pros to make shadow puppetry films.
Relying on white bed sheets, overhead projectors and other types of lighting, they’ll cast shadows using their bodies, objects or cut-outs, then learn how to film the movements smoothly.
Other campers might make use of a green screen for their movies, learning how to key tone the background and gaining skills to make a subject invisible, to make objects float or to overlay screens so that a character appears to be talking to a clone of himself.
Finally, kids choose music to enhance their stories.
For a film about Pac-Man coming to life, kids overlaid a soundtrack reminiscent of the original retro game.
For the film “Nectar,” a team used stop-motion animation to show a procession of origami butterflies migrating. Set to a piano score, the film was “gorgeous, kind of ethereal,” Gonzalez says.
Throughout the week, campers also view and critique fulllength movies.
“There’s something magical about movies (that connects us),” Gonzalez says. “We all want to make something that gets the story across.”
In past years, campers’ short films have been selected for the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and other juried shows.
But, Gonzalez says the highlight of each summer is an August film premiere at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston that wraps up the camp term.
As campers enter the event with their parents and guests, an Aurora team member using flash photography acts as the “paparazzi.” Guests receive printed invitations and each camp team has the chance to discuss their film in front of the audience.
It’s an “empowering experience that happens when they get to share their film with the world,” Gonzalez says. “The theater feels full of energy. It’s kind of a drum-roll moment.”
Campers are always eager to see the premieres of their peers’ films, he says. Each child receives a diploma and takes a bow.
“They are film directors, they’re famous … some parents are asking for their autographs,” Gonzalez says with a laugh.
There are multiple ovations before the night is over.
“Their smiles and their egos are barely going through the door,” he says. “It’s really beautiful.”