The tools for making good movies and telling important personal stories are getting cheaper and cheaper. I found this via the Rocky Mountain News:
Mike Potter racked his brain for weeks for the perfect idea. The
Broomfield native’s college was holding a contest for movies shot
entirely on cell phones.
The film could only last 30 seconds. And with such a small screen
and such challenging video and sound quality inherent in the medium,
Potter knew he needed his segment to capture a beautiful moment that
was larger than life.
He found his subjects one evening at dinner, in the form of his
grandmother and grandfather, who were seated across from him. Something
about the way they interacted felt priceless.
Potter’s film, Cheat, stars his grandparents. This week, it won the $5,000 grand prize in Ithaca College’s first CellFlix Festival.
From further down the article:
All it cost him to produce was the $100 he paid for the phone.
One judge called the film "Fantastic. Timeless. Inspiring. Contagious. Lovable. Effective. Visual economy at its best."
And while the film convinces viewers that it’s about a game the
elderly couple really plays, it’s actually something Potter made up,
based on the playful way he’d seen his grandparents interact.
The film’s quite good. Well worth the $5,000 prize. The other finalists are interesting, too.
Bud, my (high school junior) daughter was given a group English assignment that I thought was wonderful: take 2 scenes from The Glass Menagerie and present it in class, with complete production details: costume sketches, playbill, directors’ notes, production notes, etc., etc. Her group elected to film it, and she was the videographer and film editor.
She’d never made a movie before, but I had a digital videocamera and we are Mac users. The only things I showed her how to do were (1) how to operate the camera (2) how to download the film from the camera to iMovie.
Everything else she sussed out by herself. What a powerful learning experience!