Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Reel Grrls Programming Update: Music Video Camp


Last week marked Reel Grrls' first-ever Spring Break Music Video Camp: new and experienced teen media-makers joined us over their spring break to conceive, shoot, edit, and animate music videos for four local bands - in only five days.

The videos are now up on our Vimeo Workshop Page - check them out! I think you will agree that the grrls were able to complete pretty amazing work in such a short amount of time. Many of the participants had never shot video on an advanced camera or edited on Final Cut Pro!

One thing we really enjoyed about the camp was the opportunity to introduce the grrls to amazing local (and female-anchored) acts Canary Sing, the Young Evils, the Nextdoor Neighbors, and Another Perfect Crime. Thanks so much to all of the bands for providing us with songs, and giving the grrls the creative freedom to run wild on the videos!



Reel Grrls participants, mentors, and staff all agreed that a huge highlight of the camp were the visits from local filmmakers (and music video producers) Zia Mohajerjasbi and Lynn Shelton. Zia brought along his friend Ben (also known as Macklemore). They showed their recent video for The Town, and talked about their process in creating it.



Lynn Shelton is best known most recently for her phenomenally successful feature film, Hump Day. But she has also produced a number of excellent music videos for Seattle artists, all of which are viewable on her website. Her presentation was incredibly informative - she walked us through her entire process, sharing with us her call sheets, treatments, and other preproduction tools. It was amazing!

When all was said and done, the grrls really blew everyone away with what they were able to accomplish in just a few days of shooting. One group even managed to shoot over three minutes of stop-motion animation with paper cutouts in just two and a half days! That was a lot of scissor work!



Here's their finished product. All of the music videos were just outstanding. We can't wait to run this program again!

The Next Door Neighbors: Liars from ReelGrrls Workshops on Vimeo.

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