Today Patrick Durkin (Key Grip) and I taught a 5th grade class at Saint John Catholic Church about special effects in film. I started the class by showing them this demo reel montage from Stargate Studios on their smart board (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k).
They watched in amazement and almost every kid had their hand up wanting to ask a question when the video was done. We talked about Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, Harry Potter, The Nutty Professor, Jurrasic Park and Ace Ventura. Each film had something different to teach. Lord of the rings and Planet of the Apes used motion capture suits with lazer guided helmet cameras tracking their facial expressions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i6f7H8SVFQ). They liked how they used trampolines to make the humans jump like monkeys.
Jurrasic Park of course had animatronics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4J9TBlFxAg). In this clip the kids noticed how much noise animatronics makes over special effects. One kid thought the dinosaur was real! The Nutty Professor used make-up and prosthetics while Ace Ventura used live animals with trainers.
We finished off the class by passing around an old wind-up 16mm Bell&Howell automatic cinecamera from the 40s, a super 8 camera from the 80s and then a modern day cellphone which we used to take this picture.
I try to do something like this whenever I can. In 2012 I worked with a teacher at Berclair Elementary on a short documentary about alternative teaching techniques in the classroom (http://vimeo.com/50169895). We also did one the previous year in 2011 which the Memphis City Schools then showed to other teachers (http://vimeo.com/12060976).
At the end of the day doing something like this gives me a huge energy/creative boost.
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