Yesterday I went to Coronado Beach on a very foggy morning to make my movie called The Quest. Please take a look by clicking on the title in the gray fog color and you can make it change to orange. I hope you look at it full screen so you can see everything.
It was a class project from our teacher Merrill DeGraff and I wanted to tell a story, use my own drawings and film video on the beach. I learned so much about making movies. It isn't easy. I wrote my story down and had to record the narration dozens of times so it would match the action of my movie. You get lots of bloopers like in Pixar movies and sometimes they are really funny. You laugh and get frustrated but you keep on trying to get it right.
I had to make a storyboard and sequence my drawings. I have been learning how to do that in my art class with our teacher Allison Bell. I got my pencil drawings in order and included one watercolor painting of the blue whale for the storm scene. One of my favorite things is to draw letters. I used the plastic sword to write out the film titles in the sand and filmed them and the other moving video to tie my drawings to the big story. I had to shoot lots of footage and cut things out that did not work. You have to be patient and keep trying no matter what.
Music is really important in a movie. Dad and I sat together and listened to the songs of our friend Gil Gutierrez who lives in Mexico and is like my uncle. We picked this one because I thought it was kind of spooky and mysterious like the story. Mom and I worked together in Camtasia studio to put all the pieces together. It was hard work but so much fun and I hope you will try it too. If you get a chance take a look at this film of bonus material where I draw a Greek boat and talk about what I learned .
When we were done we made a big pot of spaghetti and talked all about the quest of making a movie.
