An app for Young Storytellers participating in the middle school Movie Makers Program to practice filmmaking techniques on the iPad. Created as Capstone project for Ada Developer's Academy Cohort 7.
Young Storytellers is a Los Angeles Based nonprofit which has a mission to "inspire young people to discover the power of their own voice" through storytelling, playwriting, and filmmaking.
In one of their core, year-long programs - Movie Makers - highschool aged mentors and industry professionals lead middle school participants through writing and directing their own short films.
The program coordinators have noticed that despite the kids being familiar with the technology used in the program - specifically the cameras on iphones and ipads - the participants lacked the confidence when applying the technology to shoot a narrative film. Although the kids were familiar with selfies and snapchat, when it came to storytelling and evoking emotion through shot choice, they felt unprepared.
For the month long final Capstone project at Ada Developer's Academy, I developed From Shot to Story to help teach these kids about traditional filmmaking techniques and how they can be mapped onto the use of an iphone or ipad camera. Hopefully this will help confidence of the participants and lower the technical barriers for these kids to share their stories. This can be used in-class when the program mentors are getting the kids comfortable with the technical side of filmmaking, or out of class as additional practice.
- List of different types of Shots/Techniques
- Photo & Gif displaying age-appropriate example of technique taken from Young Storyteller films.
- Description of shot & how it can be used in storytelling.
- Try it!
- In show view, "try it" button will open up a modal view with camera access.
- Will be able to shoot short video clip (30 seconds).
- After done shooting, will be prompted to save it or try again with suggestions (try moving closer to actors, giving them direction, etc).
- Create a Cut: Choose a short story sentence to film with 4 shots, or have one randomly selected.
- Jess is having a terrible day.
- Dustin is enjoying the beautiful weather.
- Lila gets distracted
- A new school is very scary.
- Sleep is my favorite activity.
- Julia is trying to impress her teacher so she can get an A in class.
- Dylan can’t wait for school to be over so he can go to Disneyland.
Choose 4 types of shots to use to tell your story. Choose from previously saved takes or shoot new video. Put it together to see your story come to life.