Tabletop Moviemaking
Taught by Brick Maier
Ages 10 – 14
Saturday, February 20, 2010
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
This workshop takes place at 826LA East

Roll up your sleeves and go from a blank page to a film screening of your own original short movie in two hours! From writing, to building, to shooting, to editing and exporting, participants will go through the entire movie production process. Students will draft a collaborative story in small groups, then create scenery and props to add to a standard set of characters and settings. Finally, we'll use film vocabulary and hands-on camera work to capture the movie. Volunteers with editing skills will cut it together in no time, and then it's lights out and popcorn for little movies on the big screen!

Brick Maier is a former middle school teacher in Los Angeles and the creator of the Tabletop Moviemaking method. He developed the process while on a Fulbright research grant in Ireland and refined the method further in Turin, Italy at the Laboratorio di Animazione. He has brought this method home to Los Angeles and delivers Tabletop workshops in school and community based contexts across the US and in Europe. Directors from Los Angeles and Italy have commented that it is one of the best introductions to the movie-making process they have come across. His partnership with 826LA has created Tabletop workshops at the Hammer Museum, LA Opera's Ring Festival LA, and English Language Learner camps. 826LA students have made nearly 75 movies in the past 12 months!