Your Child’s Imagination…in Short Form
By Chad Stewart
When I was a young lad, I had all sorts of ideas that I wanted to express through animation. Characters, stories, different locations and adventures all gathered in my head with no real organization, and me and my imagination had a great time. But I would have LOVED to be able to share these ideas with others. To put them into a format with style and structure; humor and drama; adventure and tragedy; and all running at the golden frame rate of 24 frames per second. I would have LOVED to make a short film.
So, years later when I was constructing what to teach in the different levels of the Animation Course, I chose to make the levels not just about animation, making a character move and giving it life, but also about film-making. Giving students the skills and opportunity to make what I couldn’t at their age: A short film full of their own characters, ideas and imagination, this is the final goal of our course.
Even if I could have made a short-film, or a ‘short’, I wouldn’t have been able to show it to that many people. I would have needed to set up a time and place, a screen and projector and invite people over to share my vision. But now it’s completely different, with a reasonable laptop and tablet a student can put out a somewhat professional looking film, and then either release that film on YouTube or other social media and submit that film into festivals, many of which are geared towards teens and students.
It’s been fun to see so many students enjoy The Animation Course and experiment with animation as an art form. I’ve been inspired by this fresh new enthusiasm from the students and have ridden right alongside in their excitement. I tell the students in Level 1, whether they continue with our classes or not, I hope they continue animating, but when they don’t come back I wonder if they still will. And even if they do, I wonder if they’ll take on the challenge of making their own film.
Making a film, especially on one’s own, can be a daunting task full of pitfalls both technically and emotionally. “Can I really do this?” “Should I just give up and do something else this summer?” “I’m never going to be any good.” “Is anyone even going to understand what’s going on?”
All of these questions ring in my ears even today and I’m reasonably certain these anxious abuses echo inside the noggins of my students too. My goal for the different levels is to walk each student through the landmine-laden journey of making a short at least one time. Then, at that point not only will they be able to find their way back through their journey a second or third time on their own, they’ll be able to experience the confidence that comes with creating something truly unique: their own imagination, memorialized in motion at 24 frames per second.