From the Archives- Video Blogging with Our Intern!

November 15, 2011

Every week, I (Michelle, Jenna’s assistant teacher) get to meet with one of our interns for our Saturday program at the PIT, Jake!  

Jake is helping us create the video portion of this blog, and even though he’s not with us on Saturdays, he gets to watch us in action via our nifty flip camera.  I wanted to give him an opportunity to introduce himself, so heeeeere’s Jake!

My name is Jacob and I am a student at Cooke SKILLs.  It’s my final year in the program and I hope to achieve my goals in working with animals, human rights, and film.  I want to play a big part in conservation of the environment so animals and humans can thrive.  I’d like to team up with organizations like UNICEF and the United Nations.  I want to work to bring food and homes to people, not to mention education and freedom of expression.  In film, it has been my dream to create great films, not just for the pleasure of it, but also because some media these days are leaving us worrying about who we are on the outside.  I want to introduce people, especially kids and young adults, to films with good values and sincere storytelling and those who put both humor and heart in a balanced way.   At SKILLs my favorite subject is World History because I’ve come to learn that the more we learn about our past, the more we learn about how to construct and build our future.  I like to read because it’s good to learn about something new and get a sense of what happens in a story, whether real or fictitious.  I also write and I want people to be portrayed in good ways and not stereotyped or biased.

Daytime Moon Creations is a stepping stone because it’s working with people and introducing them to good environments, not to mention filming them.  Working for this company is a dream come true for me because it’s my kind of thing: working with young people and introducing them to wonderful environments.  I hardly understood until recently how much things like this can influence us and gives us an opportunity to do things in positive ways.

I also attend the Daytime Moon Theater Workshop on Thursdays.  Before Daytime Moon, I was in the theater and film business.  At camp, I played a British soldier in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Peter in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Man Behind the Curtain in The Wizard of Oz.  At Cooke Center Academy, I was in The Wizard of Oz again as The Scarecrow.  I also created three short films with my film tutors.

With all this experience, the Thursday program is giving me the hope that I could someday give out a voice to others, and help actors get into character, just as Jenna and Michelle do for me and my classmates.

-Jake

Last week, each actor at the PIT created a commercial for something they were each interested in. Jake and I chose a couple of them to show you, so check them out!

Teddy shows us the best things about owning an iPod:

And Talia makes us all want to buy an American Girl Doll:

Jake’s Take on the commercials: They are interesting because people can express their feelings about what they like, or to put it bluntly, their cup of tea. If I were to make a commercial, it would be about Wildlife Explorer, which is a series about wildlife, habitats, and conservation issues.

Jake’s first video is our introduction to our video blog which will feature kids each week.

Jake’s Take: Editing this video was the first time I got a glimpse of the actors on screen doing their daily exercises and games, or to make it simple, activities.  I made the video using iMovie by cutting and pasting parts of footage delivered from Daytime Moon.  The emotion exercises indicate actors getting a sense of what each feeling is like: happy, sad, scared, angry – that sort of thing. It is necessary because in this way, actors can learn to express feelings when they play the roles on stage.

Until next time…

-Michelle and Jake