Moviestorm in Education: Long Road College, Cambridge

Students from Long Road Sixth Form College recently completed their animation coursework videos using Moviestorm.

The Level 2 Media students were asked to come up with a short three to four minute moving image product using Moviestorm. The groups gave initial ideas into a typed proposal and from this generated storyboards and in some cases design sheets. They then moved on to producing their final videos, which can be watched here.

Two groups (3 & 4), one all boys and the other mostly girls, chose a scenario about teenage party life. Two groups (1B & 2) chose to do a music-based production, a music video and a reality music TV show. The last group (1A), ventured an ambitious first episode of a ‘Youtube’ style series.

 Long Road Media teacher Steve Thorne said:

"Great time and effort was spent adding the small details. One example was the music video group’s work to recreate the band to look the same as the real one! After working with Moviestorm again this year I think working in pairs generates the best results and group time management."
 
Before the final Moviestorm videos were produced, the groups of students worked on either the characters or settings and then brought them together to add the camerawork and action.

Steve chose Moviestorm to give the students the opportunity to work with a 3D animation software so they didn’t have the same limited scope of the usual video productions shooting scenes around the college. He added:

"This was their chance to use filmmaking techniques in a virtual setting. They also had complete control over every element within their production. I think the generated animations link well to game design and advanced 3D animation software packages."

"Overall it’s been a fantastic resource for the course. The students have really taken to it and enjoyed the production work very much. It’s definitely going to be built into the course more next year!" 

 The initial production stages followed the Moviestorm six-stage production process. All groups were very committed to the ‘Sims’ style character design stage and the production of the virtual settings. CEO of Moviestorm Andrew Kennedy said:

"The students at Long Road demonstrated a rapid development of filmmaking skills and final sophistication between their demos and final movies, and it is nice to see ideas that were formulated whilst they initially played with the software for the first time coming through in their final pieces. 

Steve Thorne needs to be congratulated in creating this module, as it is giving the students an opportunity to test and develop their individual filmmaking skills without the normal logistical and budgetary restrictions, from production design and casting, into scene direction and camerawork, and through to sound design and editing skills. We hope to see more collaborations and films from this group of students, and look forward to supporting Long Road Sixth Form College into the future."

Further links

Final videos here: https://vimeo.com/album/2367854

Demo videos here: https://vimeo.com/album/2302569

Flickr Album here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30136544@N08/sets/72157633378985852/

At the touch of a button...

Are you ready for this? Coming up in Moviestorm 1.4 is probably the single most useful interface change we've made in ages.

When you're in the Director's view, press F2. Everything on the set that you can interact with is highlighted, and each prop tells you everything that you can currently do with it.

No more clicking around to see what does what. It's all there, right in front of you, instantly.

This is still work in progress - we haven't finalised the look and feel of this, and there are some issues with using the F2 key, particularly on Macs - but it's hard to stress just how much difference this makes, and how much this opens up Moviestorm to novices and experienced users alike. Even the dev team are finding things they didn't know were in there.

We're aiming to finalise development on Moviestorm 1.4 this week and get it over to QA. Then we'll test the hell out of it for a while, and make the awkward decisions as to what actually makes it into the next release and what's going to be held over for more development.

Customisable held props

As well as all the stuff we already promised you for 1.1.6, we've also managed to squeeze in another new feature: customisable held props. You can now, for example, tint the briefcase, or add your own photo to the ID card. Just use the prop as normal, then click on the character (while she's holding the prop) and hit Customise Prop.



One hidden benefit of this is that similar props are now variations of each other, so you can set a character up with one guitar, build your music video, and then switch guitars without having to redo everything.