School outreaches

This is the first week in many months that I do not have any outreaches. I had two of them to focus on for the past several months. One was from a high school and the other was an after school program.

The high school group was a bit difficult. Most the kids were there by default, since the options they wanted were already full. But it ended up ok. I will say I tried to use a curriculum and that miserably failed. It partly happened that way since half the kids were already familiar with video production and some imovie (though they failed to tell me that during our first day, no wonder why they were not paying attention). It also may have happened because another portion of the group was completely uninterested in learning. Some of these kids have issues with instant gratification. They want results now. There was little interest in planning. And then when it came time to shoot, there was no planning to fall back on. I also hate to say this, but it was kinda a rotten group of kids. A couple of loud mouths and show offs detract from the rest of the group and impede on learning. But I guess that's a common complaint. One of the students even voiced her distaste for the class and completely disrespected the teacher. She called the teacher lazy and annoying and all these things right to her face. Maybe kids these days have little respect and little patience.

For one kid, all he wanted to do was hustle and make rap and beats and all that junk. I finanlly gave in, since he was not productive to the group, and let him play with garageband. I explained the program to him, gave him a tutorial. Even set him up. And he couldn't even figure it out. All he wanted to do was make beats. And we have that capacity. But he wanted it instantly-  he sat at the computer for nearly two hours with nothing to show.  geez.

Anyways, they did have some final results. There was a psa about basketball and physical activity. And there were grandios plans for a motorcycle fundraiser where motorcycle groups in the area would preform tricks and stuff. That fundraiser was cancelled. But at least there were two good interviews about motorcycles and safety and some other issues that were turned into a short movie. Nothing festival worthy, but I'm sure glad that they at least produced something. I also had some good talks about consumerism and why those nike air forces and michael jordans are so important. Puts the whole media literacy in perspective when trying to teach it to a bunch of urban youth who work hard at crappy jobs to earn the money to get the shoes and the looks to be socially accepted.

The other group at the after-school center turned out well, despite a few obstacles. The kids were making a video about their center to show parents at a community brunch. They got great footage and interviews. BUT lo and behold, one of the cameras I was using was freakin broken. And I had no idea until it was editing time because I never went over the footage. I guess the heads on the camera were misaligned resulting in digital glitches in the video and the sound. Also, one of the mics was malfunctioning.

LESSON: always go back and look at your footage. Ideally, import it into a computer.

In the end, it worked out ok. Kids got to use a camera, which most of them never have before. But there was little time for editing, which was what some the kids were really excited about. I think some of those kids are signing up for our summer classes too, so that was a good way to get more kids involved.

The next month will be spent fixing some other videos, preparing for summer classes, and working on the policies and guidelines for the youth media program here