asherbow37

My brand new to homeschooling son wants to learn about how movies are
made. Any and every aspect of commerical hollywood film-making
interests him at the moment. Do you have ideas for resources? books?
software? websites? dvds? other ideas?

Thanks,
ayala

Robyn L. Coburn

I'll just mention that I work in the film business in Hollywood and so does
my dh.

If you go to Amazon.com and search "movie making" in the Books tab you will
get 11,506 results. I would consider it a fairly crowded field. Many of
these are books about the making of individual movies, so if your son has a
couple of favorite films, you could look for those in the list.

For the "How To'" try to look at the publishing date and choose a more
recent one, because that will include the most up to date technology and
reflect the newest trends. Honestly I would avoid the "How to do this for
tiny money" books, at least at first, because although there are occasional
success stories, most people's micro budget film is never seen by anyone.
Doing things on the micro cheap is always a long tale of compromise and will
be telling you how to get around the conventions and proper protocols,
instead of explaining why they are in place. There is not one single
producer who, if given the real choice, would not choose a bigger budget -
and this is at any budget level!

Many of the books are biographies or memoirs of noted film makers -
producers, directors - if you see a name you like or recognize those would
be good.

As for the "how to" books, actually I was looking for the title of a
reallygood basic little book that detailed the different jobs I found useful
some years ago, but in doing so I found a newer one aimed at kids in comic
format, that I rather like the look of: http://tinyurl.com/5yn4y3 "Lights,
Camera, Action".

Other really useful insiders' sources are the journals from the unions. If
you google IATSE you will get a link to the main alliance, but also scroll
down to the locals. Moving past the politcal articles, there are often
articles dealing with specific issues written by people working in the
business. The Location Managers journal is a good one. If you have a Local
in your town you might be able to visit it and talk to some people. If you
have a movie shooting locally you might try to visit - call the production
office first - or find out if they are casting local extras. People were
flocking to the Ren Faire that James' movie is using as a location. It
stayed open an extra week.

The letters that appear after the names of crew members in the credits are
professional societies. For instance, James is a member of the Cinema Audio
Society. They all publish journals. Cinefex, the FX folks journal is a
gorgeous publication, and is usually on the magazine rack in the big chain
bookstores.

Turner Classic Movies has guests that come and talk about their lives and
processes. FOX Movie Channel has a series called "Life After Film School"
where currently working directors and producers are interviewed by a panel
of current film school students about their process.

There are a few home movie editing software suites around. I will leave it
to someone experienced with them to make recommendations. We have a regular
old video cam, and a tiny hand held video cam that holds 30 minutes before
you have to upload the film to the computer. Jayn has used both with a lot
of fun.

Let me know if you are ever in Los Angeles. There are places to see.

If you have any questions about terminology, you can email me and I'll
answer them as best as I can.

Robyn L. Coburn
www.Iggyjingles.etsy.com
www.iggyjingles.blogspot.com

Joanna Murphy

When my son was about 9 he got really into clay animation with very simple tools. He
made a little set on the dining room table, set up the digital camera on a tripod and
downloaded the pics to the computer that came with software to make the pics into a
movie. He could edit the pics, add sound effects, titles, etc. The movies are simple and
incredibly charming and funny.

He was able to play with character, story, timing, etc. with no investment except for clay.
It may not be quite what your son wants to do, but I thought I'd mention it.

Joanna
--- In [email protected], "asherbow37" <ayala.sherbow@...> wrote:
>
> My brand new to homeschooling son wants to learn about how movies are
> made. Any and every aspect of commerical hollywood film-making
> interests him at the moment. Do you have ideas for resources? books?
> software? websites? dvds? other ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> ayala
>

MrsStranahan

A Netflix account and DVDs with director's commentary.

You can do a search for reviews of the commentary. Here's review of best and
worst - *http://tinyurl.com/4vqefb *

On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Joanna Murphy <ridingmom@...> wrote:

> When my son was about 9 he got really into clay animation with very
> simple tools. He
> made a little set on the dining room table, set up the digital camera on a
> tripod and
> downloaded the pics to the computer that came with software to make the
> pics into a
> movie. He could edit the pics, add sound effects, titles, etc. The movies
> are simple and
> incredibly charming and funny.
>
> He was able to play with character, story, timing, etc. with no investment
> except for clay.
> It may not be quite what your son wants to do, but I thought I'd mention
> it.
>
> Joanna
>
> --- In [email protected] <AlwaysLearning%40yahoogroups.com>,
> "asherbow37" <ayala.sherbow@...> wrote:
> >
> > My brand new to homeschooling son wants to learn about how movies are
> > made. Any and every aspect of commerical hollywood film-making
> > interests him at the moment. Do you have ideas for resources? books?
> > software? websites? dvds? other ideas?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > ayala
> >
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sandra Dodd

I think there's commentary on the DVD of The Wizard of Oz, about how
they did the tornado. We loaned our copy out a year ago and they
haven't found it yet.

More and more DVDs have extras. Aladdin, Disney--lots of extras
about the voices and cartoons and art.

Do you have a camera or phone that will take just a short video?
Doing some of those will give him ideas for what to look for with
framing and backgrounds and sound. Just looking and thinking isn't
as good for some people as trying it out, seeing what goes well and
what doesn't and then knowing more when they look and think about other

Sandra

prism7513

>
> When my son was about 9 he got really into clay animation with very
simple tools. He
> made a little set on the dining room table, set up the digital
camera on a tripod and
> downloaded the pics to the computer that came with software to make
the pics into a
> movie. He could edit the pics, add sound effects, titles, etc. The
movies are simple and
> incredibly charming and funny.
>

You can find tons of stop animation clips on YouTube. My daughter just
today made her first 5-frame clip. She chose the sound effects, I
helped make the frames which she altered on her own, and I used the
software to put it together. She's been interested in cartoons for
over a year and how they move and talk. After seeing a funny elephant
cartoon on YouTube, she wanted to make her own.

Deb

lifeislearning

Two of you have referred to "software" - what software are you using?
Particularly for the clay animation, which I think my son would
really get a kick out of.

Thanks,
Barb

--- In [email protected], "Joanna Murphy" <ridingmom@...>
wrote:
>
> downloaded the pics to the computer that came with software to make
the pics into a
> movie. He could edit the pics, add sound effects, titles, etc.

Tom Hall

I'm not one of "the two of you", but if you have a mac there is a
program called "istopmotion" that is really great.

http://boinx.com/istopmotion/overview/home/

The Home version is $49 but it's well worth it.

It's very intuitive and easy to use, and works with both digital movie
cameras and (some) still cameras. It exports directly into imovie for
editing and adding soundtracks.

My son has been making movies with it since he was 7.


Hope that helps,
Tom


lifeislearning wrote:
>
>
> Two of you have referred to "software" - what software are you using?
> Particularly for the clay animation, which I think my son would
> really get a kick out of.
>
> Thanks,
> Barb
>

prism7513

> Two of you have referred to "software" - what software are you using?
> Particularly for the clay animation, which I think my son would
> really get a kick out of.
>

We bought Easy Media Creator to make home movies and such, and that is
expensive, but works well. Today I also found my computer has Windows
Movie Maker, which may have come with my computer, I'm not sure. But
we used it to make her cartoon, and it was fairly simple and easy to use.
Then there's this free animator:
http://www.clayanimator.com/english/stop_motion_animator.html, but I
don't know how it works. It seems to need the camera hooked up to the
computer and will download the pics straight from there, but won't let
me put in images from my desktop, which I'd prefer.

That website lists commercial programs, as well.

Deb

Joanna Murphy

My son was using Showbiz on the pc. He says that there are newer versions that come
standard in Vista.

Joanna
--- In [email protected], "lifeislearning" <barb.jeffress@...> wrote:
>
> Two of you have referred to "software" - what software are you using?
> Particularly for the clay animation, which I think my son would
> really get a kick out of.
>
> Thanks,
> Barb
>
> --- In [email protected], "Joanna Murphy" <ridingmom@>
> wrote:
> >
> > downloaded the pics to the computer that came with software to make
> the pics into a
> > movie. He could edit the pics, add sound effects, titles, etc.
>