Thanks to Claire O'Neill for the article on our light painting project, Paint The World With Light on the NPR blog.



An update to the project: We will be publishing a book of student work at the conclusion of the project, with all proceeds going to benefit the Jacaranda School in Malawi. Submission deadline for our project is March 1st, 2010.

For more information, please check out our website!

Now if we can only get a shout out on Car Talk!

Although the look on this kid's face alone speaks volumes for keeping the arts in schools, I'm just posting it because it made my morning. Enjoy:




Happy Friday!

Welcome back to Unintentional Film Sound week here at the Revolution. Our president of the film club presented a couple inspirational videos she wanted to share to get some creative juices flowing today. She pulled a bunch of short films from the show On the Lot, and in doing so, introduced us to a short which would be another great way to introduce a unit on foley:

Some of my favorite photographers (or for that matter, artists in general) are those who are able to tell a compelling story in a single picture. Every year we do a 'narrative photography' unit, and find inspiration from artists like Annie Liebovitz, Cindy Sherman, and Sandy Skoglund. To me, the stories that are only suggested in their photos ask more interesting questions than could be answered in a narrative that has a begining, middle, and end.

However, I always find inspiration unlike any other from Duane Michaels who uses sequence in a way that I haven't really found from any other photographers. This has always struck me as a little odd. Either I'm looking for love in all the wrong places, or not enough photographers are taking cues from Scott McCloud. Happily, I stumbled upon a sequential project at Digital Photography School, which is always a great resource, especially for finding project ideas in their forum. Take a look at how readers responded to their own sequenced photography assignment.

Speaking of movie music...

When I used to teach in New York, every year we'd take a trip to the American Museum of the Moving Image. AMMI is a great museum for learning about film, and being just around the corner from my apartment in Astoria, it was a great neighborhood place for a film geek like myself.

One of the interactive exhibits which I love there, allows you to replace the music in one scene with a soundtrack from another film. It really shows you how music can alter the tone of a scene either subtly or drastically.

Here's a great mashup of 2010 with music from Raising Arizona.



This would be in the 'drastic' category.

I especially like how the banjo's segue into "Ode to Joy" really creates some ironic tension at the end of the scene.

While I've been away on my paternity leave, I've been super lucky to have my classes covered by my friend and colleague Jeff Thompson. Jeff is a musician and has a great deal of knowledge about audio engineering. I am functionally tone deaf and don't know my treble from my bass.

So while I'm away, the students are getting lots of great information about how to get the best sound recordings, and they're also doing their unit on creating foley sounds.

As serendipity would have it, I just came across this excellent article about how Wes Anderson uses music in his films. It includes clips from his films, including this one from Rushmore, one of my favorites:



I'll have to watch that again to hold me over until I can get to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox!

Here's a great short. Terrific example of how to create an entire world and tell a story about it in just a few minutes: