Everywhere you look, you can see films around you. You can stream them on many different platforms. It is no wonder why kids are falling in love with making their films. Intro to Filmmaking from Film School for Teens is a great way to support your kid’s interest in filmmaking.
We were able to try and review Intro to Filmmaking from Timberdoodle. We were not required to write a positive review. You can find out more right here.
What Is It
Intro to Filmmaking is an online course for middle to high school students. This is a self-paced course, but it does come with an idea of what to do each week to complete the sections.
There are 18 sections to this course, each section has four different items to complete. The items are usually the lesson, the assignment, a film report, and a fun film fact. By the end of the course, your child will have not only learned the basics of filmmaking but will have completed a film of their own to enter into a film festival.
There are two different Intro to Filmmaking courses available, the Classic and the Charter. While these are both very similar, the Classic course does mention some faith-based items where the Charter does not.
On top of the online course, there is a workbook that goes with the course. For this review, I did not receive the physical copy of the workbook, but the PDF copy. This workbook goes along with the online lessons, asking questions and enforcing what is talked about during the video lessons.
How We Used It
After looking over everything and seeing how it all works, I let Ray Ray loose with the course. I told him what would need to be done each week, and let him decide when to do what. With the simple guide at the front of his workbook, he didn’t have a hard time at all setting a schedule for himself.
Ray Ray would work through the lessons and corresponding worksheets throughout the week and finish up with the film study over the weekend. All the films were easy to find, whether on a streaming network, at our local library, even in our collection.
The collection of movies that are viewed for the film studies are rated PG to PG13. They are a great collection of films, and I was thrilled to have Ray Ray watching them and thinking of them in a different way other than just watching them.
What We Thought
I loved this course for Ray Ray. He is my film guy and can tell you the release dates of many movies. To allow him to dig deeper into films and filmmaking was a treat. The questions during the lessons are very thought-provoking, as well as the questions that go along with the film reports.
Since we picked the Classic version, I loved seeing the questions about God and faith during the film reports. I never thought to think of faith during the movie Signs, but I can say it opened my eyes to look at all movies in a new way.
Ray Ray loved that the movies were not boring movies and actual ones that he enjoyed watching. He loved the video lessons and walked away learning a lot. While he wasn’t super excited about actually making a film, he did enjoy learning what does go into making one.
If you have a child who is in love with filmmaking, we highly recommend this course.
