Exclusive Moviestorm Halloween education offer: engage your students

As Halloween approaches, and kids all over the word gear up for the world of ghosts, ghouls and assorted horror, why not use the theme to engage them in classic literature and films?

 

 As this great article from Barnes & Noble suggests, horror should be embraced as a genre that inspires students to learn:

5 Reasons Horror in Children’s Literature Is a Good Thing

Combining Moviestorm and horror is a great way to enthuse your students with writing. They can write the script to a short story, and quickly bring it to life as a film, without the usual logistical restraints associated with live filming, such as equipment, cast, crew, location and of course, budget.

Moviestorm supports all levels of horror, from pumpkins and graveyards, through to modern vampire stories and all sorts of ghastly monsters. People of all ages and abilities use Moviestorm - you do not need any technical, creative or filmmaking skills to get going with it's intuitive game-style interface.

To help you get started, we have assembled a fantastic seasonal offer for your school and students, allowing you all to get productive and start creatively enjoying film and literature horror for Halloween.

Buy 5 Moviestorm Education licences, get 5 free + Annual Home Use licences are under $5* per student Contact me now - timjudges@moviestorm.net Promotions open until 31 October 2013, so get going now to avoid missing out! * Or £ / Euro equivalent

	Featured Movie Haunted House ...ghost caught on video! How to Introduce Moviestorm Advanced Skills Teacher and education advisor, James Durran, uses Moviestorm to enthuse students, ages 11-18, in English and visual literacy.  Download this engaging introductory lesson plan 6th Form Media Teacher, Steve Thorne, uses Moviestorm to allow his students to introduce and practice the art of filmmaking. Download this engaging introductory lesson plan   Student Activity As a first filmmaking exercise, why not get your students to make a simple 'shocking' Halloween film like the one above?  Use the ''hide'/'unhide' function to make your monster appear on set when the viewer last expects it!
	Watch other movies by teachers and students Featured Packs   Halloween Enter the graveyard, if you dare. Bones, the skeleton is sure to be there... Dark Romance Evoke the passion and thrill of your favourite vampire movies with this darkly romantic pack. Explore all our packs

Halloween special: Moviestorm is great for horror

As Halloween approaches, we are reminded about the fantastic horror machinima created by our users, so we thought we would draw your attention to their craft, and offer you an incentive to get youself or your friends involved in telling your own blood-curdling, ghoulish or just plain deeply-disturbing stories in Moviestorm.

Check out some of the movies and content that could be yours below, and start scaring people.  Its a lot of fun!

	Shocking stuff!
	Featured Horror Movies The 15th Floor By KV, Moviestorm Filmmaker "When Andrew is hired to disprove hauntings on the 15th floor of a hotel, he gets much more than he bargained for." Sacrifice By Steve3416, Moviestorm Filmmaker "A young man plays a dangerous game with the supernatural and demonic world." Frankenstein      by Paul Carr, English Teacher "A new series I am creating for students of ESL and or literature, introducing classic stories in a short machinima movie ..." Watch other movies by Moviestorm filmmakers ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Featured Content Male and Female Monsters Creepy, kooky, spooky and quite horrible heads for male and female Moviestorm characters. The packs includes werewolves, zombies, vampires, and other monsters. Halloween Enter the graveyard, if you dare. Bones, the skeleton is sure to be there... Dark Romance Evoke the passion and thrill of your favourite vampire movies with this darkly romantic pack.

Bonus Content – Trick or Treat!

With Halloween quickly approaching, we’re bringing you a selection of props and animations to help you shock and scare your audience! There’s a tragedy/ comedy mask (always particularly unsettling when used in the correct context!), and a hockey mask that you can customise by adding your own texture. In addition to the masks, we’re also providing a set of gruesome weapons for your characters to wield, in the form of a machete, a hot poker and a plank with protruding rusty nails! We’ve also included animations for these props so your maniacal characters can intimidate even the most hardened horror aficionado.
We’ve given you the tools, now go and terrorise your virtual neighbourhood!

Halloween horror, 2010

We've done a Halloween pack for the last couple of years, mainly because Chris just loves all that kind of stuff. In 2008 we gave you a bunch of traditional trick or treat goodies, and in 2009 we gave you a huge selection of monsters.

This year, we're knocking the Photostorm Bones stuff into shape, updating it slightly, and adding in a couple of new bits, and we're going to get that out to you some time this week. If you've already got Bones, we've added Graveyard Grass, some silhouettes, and a less complicated animation for getting your characters to start in the grave, so that they can do the "rise from grave" thing properly.

Happy screaming!

The wicked ladies

A few weeks ago, we gave you a bunch of Halloween monsters created by the Marvellous Mister Ollis. Quite rightly, a number of you observed that they were all male. This is because we are all - apart from Lisa, of course - well brought-up English gentlemen who would never, ever think of a lady as monstrous, evil, or anything less than entirely beautiful, wonderful, and charming. Even when they're dead.

However, we recognise that for dramatic purposes, it may sometimes be necessary to depict ladies in an unflattering light. So Chris went home and locked himself in the cupboard under the stairs for a month with nothing but old Hammer movies and absinthe, and here's what he came up with: a vampiress, a zombie, a witch, and Mrs Frankenstein.

These are renders of the original 3DS Max models, not the actual Moviestorm heads we'll be shipping, but you get the idea. They're all morphable, just like the guys. And they'll be available soon.

Halloween Morphing Heads

A few of the heads in Chris's Halloween Morphing heads pack are proving a little elusive. Here's how to get to the Cutter, Piggy, Frank, Mouldy and Vampyre characters.

1. Select the Halloween '09 Monster Morph head - you'll need a male character.
2. Click the arrow next to the morph slider, and choose your monster.
3. You can now morph between the basic human face and the monster face, so you can make him as monstrous as you like!

We've gone a bit batty. And cobwebby, and pumpkiny ...

Unless you're extremely naive or chronically forgetful, you'll already know that Halloween is on its way. Never one to miss out on an opportunity for silliness and costumes, we've got a fat Halloween-themed Content Pack almost ready for you.

We got pumpkins, bats and cobwebs.


We've got ghosts and coffins and candles.


Most excitingly of all from my point of view is the new grinning skull character head, which makes my Discworld fanboy bone go all tingly.

The Halloween Pack is a pet project of Chris_Ollis, who - not content with the many hours we force him to slave over a hot 3d modelling application - assembled the dozens of assets in this pack in his free time. So, if this little teaser whets your appetite at all, you can thank Chris.

All being well, we'll release this pack within the next few days. Of course (as regular readers will know) that's a hope rather than a promise. Still, as Death so aptly puts it