This week as melodies by The Beatles played in the background, students and instructors alike worked on their projects for the much anticipated Zombie Month! To get things started off right during our video production month, we introduced the basic requirements for every story, and had the students write their own comicbook storyboard that had three elements: character, conflict, and resolution. 

 

Fun Films

Each month we focus on a new subject, and while many months may vary year to year, we like to keep October Zombie Month because of the pure excitement and creativity it brings.  We teach the kids how you can integrate art with engineering, like how videographers need special effects technicians to make their on-screen dreams come true.  At the beginning of this week’s classes we showed clips from Hollywood filmmakers breaking down some special effects in popular movies like The Avengers.  This was a great segue to begin talking to the students about producing their own zombie movies this month.  As they only have four weeks to produce their short movie, we had to get the creative juices flowing early!

 

Special Effects 

“What type of special effects do you see in movies?” one of the instructors asked the class, to which the students replied “explosions!” and “fog!” Illusions, or mind tricks of the Hollywood film industry are called special effects, but are usually broken up into sub-categories: optical and mechanical. In the class we discussed the different vocations necessary in both the optical and mechanical special effects fields that make awesome movies possible!  Optical effects include photo and video manipulations and utilizing computer generating imagery (GCI). Mechanical effects include everything from animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric simulations.  Our hope was to introduce to our students a whole other world of opportunities available to them – all they need is the spark to ignite their fire!

 

 

The Challenges

This month we gave students two film challenges to choose from. The Zombie film challenge only has a few guidelines: it must have a motorized character (zombie optional) and students have the choice to work in a group or solo.  As a little motivation to create the Zombie movie of the year, we will be displaying the productions at our end of month open houses.  The second challenge for students is to create an RiQ movie! First of all, what is RiQ? It is our newest robot and product that we both use in the lab for programming and sell for individual use!  This little bot can be programmed in countless ways and uses cutting-edge technology and sensors.  For the RiQ film challenge students must have an approved storyboard, show all of RiQ‘s features, and be 60-90 seconds long.  We will be awarding the top 3 videos a prize of $50!  While we don’t normally incorporate incentives, it’s fun for the students to see their hard work pay off (literally). 

 

Perseverance 

Because many students have little previous experience with video production, this week’s healthy habit of mind was persistence!  Despite the newness of many of the projects they may embark on, it is important for them to stick with what they start and see the project through to the end. We all know that new things can sometimes be frustrating and confusing, but it is these new things that help our brains grow and ideas expand. 

 

 

We are excited to see the video creations of our students emerge in the following weeks of Zombie Month. Check out each week’s blog for exciting updates!