Making Movies with Kids

I've been co-teaching a summer camp at the Flynn all week. We've been making movies with 16 boisterous 8-10 yr old boys and girls. I am amazed to say that we have managed to make a different film each day.

The kids play ALL the roles except director, editor and cinematographer. The amazing thing is that they take their roles VERY seriously. Every day they switch so everyone can try different sized acting parts and alternate crew positions.

The students also wrote the scripts which we shot rough cuts of on our first day of camp. The difference between the rough cuts and the finished product is HUGE. But it is interesting to see that the "essence" still remains.
They chose the genres after I showed them clips from a ton of different movies. The winners were drama, adventure and suspense but there are elements of action, musicals and horror as well. They like to have battle scenes in every movie and a lot of death scenes too.

I go home every night after an all day camp and edit ALL night long. I calculated my hours and have gotten about 12 hours sleep all week. I plan on dropping dead any moment. Is it worth it? You tell me:







Tomorrow is our final screening when we show the parents what we have been doing all week. There will be popcorn. We are also shooting a documentary and going on a field trip to the Roxie. I'll miss the kids but can't wait to get a full night's sleep...