Apple has made great use of their retail stores as place of learning. Many of the locations have small theaters where pros lead classes on everything from Photoshop to Mac troubleshooting. Another fun thing they do is offer a number of youth programs. One of those upcoming programs is Apple Camp – Lights. Camera. Camp. It’s a “fun, free workshop where kids become filmmakers.” This 3-day even takes kids from 8 – 12 basically through the pre-production, production, post-production and exhibition of a mini-movie. How great it would have been to have such a thing when I was a kid! And speaking of that, a little story …

Creativity Interrupted

When I was a kid back in 8th grade a couple of buddies and myself decided we wanted to make a movie. It was to be a horror movie that we titled Superstitions. It was very simple in concept. The characters in the movie would do something that was traditionally seen as causing bad luck. Then they would die.

We had located a number of props to use; a ladder, a mirror to be broken, a black cat and had found a place that rented a VHS video camera. We didn’t really have a script but more of an outline with some diagrams as to how the scenes would play out. I came to find out later these were storyboards! We huddled up in the corner of the classroom during free time for a few days as we worked on pre-prodcution for our movie. The teacher finally wondered exactly what we were up to and interrupted our little group one day to find our notes and diagrams about, well … people being killed. She was not happy. We tried to explain to her that we were going to make a movie but she didn’t quite understand what we were attempting. She took our notes and we all got in trouble. She basically told us “you can’t do that. You’re just kids.” Thanks a lot Ms. Hedges.

Of course today we would probably have been suspended or expelled for talking and writing about killing people but all we wanted to do was have some fun and explore how movies were made.

Don’t let that happen to your kids!

If only we had had Apple’s camp that our parents could have taken us to. That and digital camcorders, computers, iMovie etc. This free, 3-day camp will take your kids from “storyboarding to shooting footage to editing” and end with an Apple Camp Film Festival to screen the finished productions. Here’s a breakdown of the camp, from Apple’s website:

Day One (1.5 hours)

• Introduction to the basics of moviemaking on the Mac
• Theme selection and storyboarding
• Prepare for shooting footage outside the store overnight, or inside the store at the end of the workshop

Day Two (1.5 hours)

• Introduction to iMovie – simple-to-use moviemaking software
• Use a Mac to work with movie footage they collected, incorporating stills and music
• Create a film

Day Three (1 hour)

• Film Festival

Okay so 3 collective hours of instruction isn’t that in-depth but hey, it’s free and it’s for kids. What a great idea to get kids thinking about movies, how they are made and, most importantly, making their own. Dates look like they are beginning around July 19 with around eight different sessions that run up until July 28. Most of the stores I looked at are running two sessions each day with the screenings on Saturday. Sign up soon as it looks like a lot of them are filling up. Full details are on Apple’s website. Happy filmmaking!