Worked in the studio with a group of 24 teens with autism and other developmental delays yesterday. Spectrum University kicked off the last week of their summer camp by producing a movie trailer entitle: Spectrum University-Mission Totally Possible.
It was very interesting preparing the curriculum for this activity. The first problem and the biggest was the number of students, counselors, and press crammed into our facility. 24 kids, 15 counselors, 6 studio employees, 1 camp director, and a couple cameramen from local television. I set up three learning centers and used the three groups of eight previously decided upon which helped, though I should have spread around the work a little more. Kids acted in front of the chromakey: climbing up the side of a building, swimming underwater to plant or defuse a "bomb", and skydiving. They shot more dramtic scenes in our control room including my favorite line, "Which wire? WHICH WIRE?" Or, "I'm going to hurt your camp counselor." Also they did some exterior shots and recorded voiceovers in our edit suite.
Was a hectic couple hours, but I think the kids got a pretty good perspective of how a film gets put together and they will love the final product. Dealing with their disabilities was much easier than I had expected, though I had planned on treating these kids just like anyone else (inclusion?) which went pretty well. Rachel Salomon-Sadowitz, the camp director, does an incredible job motivating these kids, and the counselors all seemed pretty proactive in working with their assigned students. We only had a couple of situations where kids didn't want to participate or took a lot of encouragement, but as my editor Ryan pointed out, "There are college kids who wouldn't have handled the situation this well."
I WOULD LOVE to post the final product up here, but that will not be possible. However, with permission of the program, I can probably show anyone interested if you want to come by the TV Studio. It's going to be awesome!
Posted by cmwillis at June 27, 2006 9:32 AM | TrackBack