Are you the parent of a child or teenager who loves film-making? Here are some suggestions to help you encourage their interest in film:
Look for after-school film-making programs in your community.
There are many kinds of film-making courses available for young people in Toronto. Some are based more for film acting, others are for young people more interested in the film-making process such as story-boarding, lighting, sound, editing, use of camera, directing and so on. Some focus on editing, and others on critiquing film. Centauri Arts offers a film-making program that includes story-boarding, screenwriting, directing, DOP, audio, lighting, design, producing and acting in front of the camera. We also use clips from movies to introduce students to different film-making and directorial styles.
Watch Movies!
Encourage your student to watch age-appropriate movies of as many different genres as possible. Invite them to watch films critically, exploring what makes a film work for an audience. Becoming familiar with the styles of different directors, and looking at how they achieve their goals, can be really useful for young filmmakers. Watch films created by different cultures and in different decades, too.
Get Hands-on Practice Making Movies!
Film-making is now very accessible for most people. You can use whatever equipment you have available to you to start. You need a camera (even a smart phone is a good start), editing software (check out our list of free film resources here) and lots of enthusiasm. There are so many great on-line and free resources for editing and plenty of sites offering royalty-free music (always make sure you have permission to make use of the music you include). Film-making is a team activity, so encourage your filmmaker to collaborate on film projects with their friends – perhaps during the holidays.
Get Involved in the Film-Making Community.
Toronto has many film-making classes and schools such as Centauri Arts, in Bloor West Village, Toronto where film-makers take weekly hands-on classes in film making and learning about all of the roles that are essential to film-making. There are also some terrific festivals here in Toronto such as TIFF (The Toronto International Film Festival), The Toronto Short Film Festival, The Toronto Independent Film Festival, The Toronto Black Film Festival, Hot Docs, The imagineNative Film Fertival and many more.
