Spring 06 Work - Level 3

Hello, Scott here to share what my class did last semester as well. I teach the Animation 3 (Pixar 3) class at the Academy of Art University. Usually I co-teach with Angus MacLane but he's taken time off from teaching. This time around I had the very talented and experienced Adam Burke along to help me out.

Because each semester is only 15 weeks long it has been very hard to get a filmmaking class going. Students simply need more time (like a full year) to truly develop a film/thesis project. Because of this time limitation, I decided to try something different and put together a "scene workshop". The idea was to give students a chance to work on a scene from a movie; to simulate the actual work environment of a feature animaiton studio. The hope was to force students to collaborate on the scene in finding the proper acting across the arc of the scene. I intentionally picked a scene that had clear characters, some fun dialogue, and a buildup to a climax and resolution so that it would be fun to watch out of context of the movie. The students were not told what movie the dialogue was from and were discouraged from seeking it out. Each student was given 2-3 shots and was responsible for all characters in the shot. Adam Burke and I acted as the "directors"; inspired by the students' best ideas, we steered them in a coherent directrion.

This scene represents 10 weeks of work. It was not nessesarily important to us that all the animation get finished/polished, but that the ideas and acting ideas make sense and be fun as the scene played through. It is my opinion that all too often, animation students worry too much about the details, movement, and polish in their animation without really thinking about the content. With this assignment I wanted students to think like actors and filmmakers. I was very pleased with the outcome and will continue to experiment with this idea for future classes.

For this first experimental class a scene from the movie "The Imposters" with Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt was chosen:

Download File Here