The upstairs room of the East Central Community Center was filled today with the sounds of clattering chairs "attacking" an actor who desperately dove for cover under the tables.
Photo: Two students employ their variation on the zooming/trucking shot made famous by Alfred Hitchcock in Vertigo. They are shooting "Furniture Fury" a scary comedy about disturbingly alive household objects.
Students in TINCAN's filmmaking camp dove into various creative worlds this week, with ideas ranging from a historic theater mystery to a Mad Libs game that comes to life. The theme for this summer's camp was "Think Small, Act Big." With the increasing popularity of portable media content via ipods and cell phones in mind, teens were asked to create a movie for the small screen.
Today's digital filmmakers face a new landscape of distribution possibilities. Instead of needing viewers to come to a central location like a theater to see their films, today's storytellers can send their artwork out to individuals, reaching many more people than possible before. Where there is a way though, there are many people willing to try it, and so the new challenge becomes making a film that will stand out from the vast media clutter of the internet.
So far their solutions to this problem are to find topics that appeal to everyone, and show them in a "cool" way, create original stories, and tell a story with a lesson. Will they succeed? You be the judge. Watch their finished films online at the virtualteencenter.org this Friday!
