My students have a lot of opportunities to make Movie as a group. Mainly for the convenience; it is hard for high schoolers to organized their friends all the time for videos. However, through the natural order of organization, students who are better at editing always end up as the editors. So I came up with a way for all the students to get editing experience in HitFilm4 express.
The Assignment focuses on tone in movies and their respective trailers, and how music, lighting, and well times cuts and change the tone of a movie dramatically.
The student were required to pick a movie, and create a trailer that is the opposite of its original genre. For example: Mary Poppins as a Horror film, or Saw as a comedy.
I am a pretty big fan of Rhett and Link, and if you are ever at a loss for a video for students, they are always good, and you don't even need to pre-watch them before you play them because they stay PG and students love them.
I can not speak more highly about the YouTube Channel "Folding Ideas". His Channel has helped me many-a-time put together lessons for my film students.
This video is about Basic Cuts, and for a class full of blossoming filmmakers, it is very valuable information. One thing I have noticed with my students is their marriage to the straight cut, and having this information is a great start to getting them to break out of that rut.
We see so much Green Screen and CGI work in our movies now,that we don't even process that they are there, even the youtube videos we watch use special effects on a regular Basis. This lesson is to help students get a better understanding of green screen work and the process it take to create a believable special effect.
Something to note: This is a hard concept and and a lot of work, your students first attempts might not be as successful as you were hoping, but it is important to see those mistakes and really have a conversation about how they would go about fixing and improving them in the future. I would even suggest doing a practice film where there all just try to overlap green screen footage as practice.
There are two types of green screen work you can you use.
Computer animated Green Screen: where the green screen is over laying your characters and your scene and your actors have to react to the green screen to keep make it look realistic.
Green Screen Background: Where your actors do their acting in front of a green screen and then their surrounding are added in post production.
When you are setting up a green screen you want to make sure that you have plenty of lighting. Green screen usually work best with a 4 point lighting system. You want two light facing the green screen and two lights facing you actor, The "Bawler on a budget" version is having two lights and aim them at a low angle so the shadows don't get casted behind your actors. It distorts the background and makes it almost look like fog behind the actors.
Diegesis: Is the rule of the universe in a movie. I could go on for a while about it, but I think this video does a better job of explaining.
These two concept go pretty well together, because not only are the students required to use the green screen, but they have to start thinking about how to make it make sense in their video.
There is a ton of green screen footage on youtube, that you can download from Youtube Downloader.
Here are a few Examples of student animation that I am sure you will enjoy. They run the Gambit of variety. Some chose to use a lot of Green screen work where others, kept their film simple.
