Mosaic Film Experience Hosts Interactive Video Production Workshop at Digital Divas Conference
At this year’s Digital Divas Conference on November 4, the Mosaic Film Experience hosted an interactive workshop to teach 35 southeast Michigan middle and high school students the process of video production. The conference took place at Eastern Michigan University’s Student Center Ballroom, located at 900 Oakwood Street in Ypsilanti.
Digital Divas was founded at Eastern Michigan University in 2010 to encourage female students to explore careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Digital Divas consists of a series of programs including conferences, summer camps, mentoring opportunities, and an interview series.“
We taught the students the video creation process from pre-production all the way through to post-production,” said Mallory Strobl, Education Lead, Mosaic Film Experience. “Through each step, we focused on how STEM and video overlap and covered a range of skills and techniques.”
During the 90-minute workshops, students were taught a plethora of valuable storytelling skills to take with them on their career journey, creating one-minute PSAs about how they use STEM in everyday life or why they want to go to college. Students learned were shown how sound engineers scout locations, how the lens interacts with photons to focus light, how to use technological tools to limit distractions and develop a message, and how to use free apps on mobile devices for post-production, including editing, music creation, and stop-motion animation.
Mosaic Film Experience Education Lead Randy Strobl met Digital Divas Program Director Dr. Bia Hamad on the set of “Future of Me,” a Detroit Public Television show educating youth about careers in STEM.“Bia talked passionately about her educational organization. I saw a lot of similarities with the Mosaic Film Experience in her work,” said Randy.This connection prompted Bia and Randy to arrange for the Mosaic Film Experience to host a workshop at this year’s conference.
The Mosaic Film Experience hopes the students enjoyed learning about career opportunities in STEM in a hands-on environment guided by real-world media industry professionals and that they will take the storytelling skills they learned and use them to shape their careers.“It was very special to hear a student walk out of the first workshop and tell a volunteer, ‘I know what I want to do now,’ regarding her career,” said Randy. “We hope that after this conference, students view the mobile devices in their life as tools to express their voice and take away a language to share their ideas.”