ACMi and Its Youth Coordinator Announce New Workshop
Coming Soon to ACMi Studio B: The Short Film Workshop (for ages 13-18)
7 Weeks, every Monday at 3:00pm from 1/28 – 3/18, except on 2/18 (February Break).
Participants will learn the history of filmmaking while creating their own short films.
Weeks 1 & 2: Film screenings
Discussion: How the were films made and the power of moving images.
Hands-on Project: telling a story in one shot, black and white, without sound.
The first week will be about pre-production planning; the second will be for shooting and reviewing the project.
Weeks 3 & 4: Participants will learn the history of film up to the point at which EDITING was introduced.
Discussion: What is editing? What is its significance in storytelling? Participants will also learn basic scriptwriting. Hands-on Project: writing a short script in Week 3 for Week 4’s project of creating videos using linear editing inside the camera. Stories will be simple, black and white without audio, and shots must be recorded sequentially.
Week 5: Review of Week 4’s shoot and resultant video.
Discussion: The history of the “Talkie” following the introduction of audio recording technology to movie making and how it initially hurt the cinema industry. Hands-on Project: participants will learn how to capture and use sound in their movie and will write a 5-page script (max) utilizing sound/talking and non-linear editing.
Week 6: Putting it all together, participants will complete their Week 4 film project of planning, shooting
while doing linear in-camera editing, writing a script, and capturing & editing the scripted audio.
Week 7: Finishing up the class’s film, participants will export the finished project to DVD as part of a
demonstration of non-linear editing using Adobe Premiere Pro digital editing software.
A Premiere Pro editing workshop will be offered the following week for those wanting to take the next step in digital non-linear editing.
About the Instructor
Daniel Black majored in Film Studies and a minored in Film Production at Keene State College. He won the school’s screenwriting competition in 2006 and had his work produced by the college. He founded there the Screenwriter’s Guild and was a teaching assistant in the advanced screenwriting class in which he gave lectures on the art of screenwriting. Dan also was part of a team that made the school’s first feature-length film.
After graduating, Dan took a part-time position reading hundreds of screenplays as a Screenplay Reader for Abbot Management, an agency based in New York and Los Angeles. The relatively few scripts Dan approved were passed on to producers. At the same time, Dan worked as an Assistant Editor / Floor Manager for an infomercial studio. There he worked with celebrities Kathy Lee Gifford and Armondo Montelongo from “Flip that House.” As an Assistant Editor he learned how to edit for broadcast television.
Following his stint with the infomercial production company, Dan worked for an organization that sold professional video production equipment and designed studio workflow systems for television stations in the New England Area. He took this position to learn the more technical side of video production, and then began a successful freelance video editing career, serving many individual clients and production houses.
FUN FACT: If you watch the Latin American TV network Telemundo long enough, you will see Dan staring in a commercial with a Latin American wife and kids. He is the only one in the commercial that does not speak Spanish, but he’s there.
In 2010 Dan produced with some friends a feature-length movie with a tiny budget. During that summer he wrote the script, scouted locations, and assembled his actors for Joy and the Apocalypse. The film began principal production in the fall of 2010 and wrapped in late January of 2011. MYTV New England gave the film a primetime television slot between 8-10pm on Saturday February 12, 2011. It was broadcast to a potential viewing audience of seven million in New England. The film also had a Red Carpet Premiere at the Red River Theater in Concord NH, home of the SNOB Film Festival. Today some people believe Joy and the Apocalypse is the greatest movie ever made. Dan’s mom is one of them.
