Yay! My Students were honored yesterday by Penguin Press in NYC for their film adaptation of "Corduroy" by Don Freeman

This is a photo of some of my students standing in front of 345 Hudson Street in New York City … the headquarters of Viking, Penguin Press a Division of Young Readers Group. These children were the main characters and writers of the Student Film Adaptation of “Corduroy” by Don Freeman. The children were invited by Ms. Joy Peskin the Associate Editor of Penguin Group to learn about the process of picture book publication first hand. The children were greeted by Ms. Peskin and her assistants. The staff presented the children with wonderful gifts of books and other fun learning material. The children ate delicious homemade cookies and got to preview and review new children’s books hitting the market next year. They were so excited and grateful to be recognized for their work on their film. I am so thankful and very proud of them!! They inspire me!

The Evoke Cinema Classroom

Under the umbrella of Evoke Cinema Productions is the Evoke Cinema Classroom, conceptualized by artist Sheena Garcia. The Evoke Cinema Classroom is a series of workshops designed to introduce students, elementary school high school and Senior Adults tothe Arts. The workshops are a fusion of fine arts, performing arts and media arts. Throughout the workshop series, students experiment and discover diverse ways of making film.

 

Evoke Cinema: Silent Kids Workshop

This is a scene from our Silent Movie,
"The Man from Virginia." The script concept was created by my 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes. The fourth graders added a lot to developing the idea for the plot. Although mature in approach, the children kept it fundamentally childlike. The plot was primarily influenced by the Chaplin movies and the African American Silent Movies the kids saw and discussed this summer. First and foremost, they HAD to have a restaurant scene like the one they saw in Chaplin's, "The Rink." They thought the scene with the cat diving out of the dinner tray was the funniest! (rent it if you haven't seen it) And, surprisingly, they wanted to dress in those fancy clothes they saw in the movie too. Their plot ... Joe Joe (Man from Virginia) arrives in New York City to follow his dream of becoming a professional dancer. He knows no one in this big City. He's hungry with little money; he stumbles across the "fictitious" Breezeway Restaurant in Harlem to see if he could afford a meal ... And the plot thickens ... Very reminiscent of 1920's Silent Films. It's really funny.

In our summer workshops, the students were introduced to various methods of animation. One technique they found really interesting and exciting was Rotoscoping, where animators trace over live action, film movement. Inspired by the “PG” portions of Richard Linklater's, “Waking Life” which we selectively watched, the children began to come up with some fresh ideas of their own. We had limited editing tools and didn’t have a rotoscoping software available to us to make an entire video using this technique. But, because the kids really loved the "look" of rotoscoping, as a group, we came up with the idea of manually painting photographs to introduce and accompany the student’s live interview clips. The students painted their own photographed portraits as stills to add to their video documentary titled, “Why I like Being a Kid.”
The portraits were scanned and added to the video during editing. Therefore, there was no actual animation in the documentary, but it sure turned out visually and innovatively, interesting! This is Kassidy one of my 5th grade students. She painted over this photograph of herself. In her live video clip she says, “ I like being a Kid because I can still have fun and I don’t have to worry about breaking up with boys.” I thought that testimonial was priceless! Nice Job Kassidy!