Who says camp ends when mom picks you up?

Can you believe there are just three more weeks before the kids go back to school?! At least here in Florida.

I tried to go the extra mile to match the kids needs to a good camp. My daughter is at her old school, where she can be with friends - and she loves it. I had my son Iden enrolled in three different performance camps and Karate - and he loved it!


But Aren, that was another story. He loves science, so I put him in Aerospace camp, Super Science camp and Rocket Camp. He went to a writing camp and Karate too.

But nothing clicked like this week at the Florida Film Academy camp.

This specialized camp is on the other side of Orlando in Windermere and worth every minute of the drive.

At the start of camp the kids were broken into groups based on common interests. They are shown some techniques in Final Cut Pro film editor and the Celtx scripting tool. They talk through some story ideas. By the afternoon the cameras come out.

And kids pick this stuff up quick.

By the end of the week Aren will have co-written three scripts, acted in three movies, filmed and directed one movie and co-edited two movies.

You'd think that would be enough, but as soon as he gets home he wants to work on other films. The following was filmed after camp at home with the iPad2 and edited in iMovie. I only helped by showing him how to use iStockPhoto.com for stock audio.

PE3_iMovie

Kari finished training in iMovie 11!

I think I am a fan of Lynda.com

as a form of instruction.  It was mere curiosity when I first logged in with my special membership code and was overwhelmed with the vast selection of topics.

In particular there were two items I always wanted to improve upon. Guess what? They were listed! Photography and Illustrator were now within reach. So I did some sneaky peeking until it became obvious I had to get cracking on my actual class assignments.

But it didn’t stop there, oh no! I wasn’t in the iMovie 11 tutorial for half an hour before they started dangling other programs that can be used with iMovie or imported to augment my projects.

So I took the bait. No, not right away like a trout. No, I waited.

My curiosity knows no bounds and Lynda.com knows it.

See I had already gotten started on a few other areas of study and new I had to finish what I started. So the minute I finished the last training video for iMovie, still flush with a sense of accomplishment and pride, I dove into iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand.

I haven't finish photography or Illustrator, yet.

And "dove" might not be the right term. More like sticking my pinky toe in to see how the water felt.

Strictly welcome and introduction videos.

I am definitely plunging with GarageBand.  Or maybe iWeb.

Crap. Who am I fooling? I have to go with iDVD so I can share my videos and pictures with my parents, who are digitally challenged and prefer DVD over YouTube.

But first, I am off to finish creating my fantastic iMovie experience on MindMeister, which I will post on this blog tomorrow.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources that relate to iMovie, please do not hesitate to share them in the comments below!