The Video Lab
For the past ten years, Engage Media Lab, previously called The Video Lab, has helped creative and amazing youth tell stories, encouraging participatory learning and community engagement.
REPORT FROM THE FIELD:
FILM, ART, CHANGE: MAKING MOVIES TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Summer intensive pre-college program (Ages 16-17)
July 6 – 31, 2015
Combining the craft of hand-made 16mm filmmaking with high definition (HD) digital techniques and tools, this class immersed high school students in the aesthetics and creative practice of media making in New York City. Students gained a critical understanding of how the unique language of cinema- sound and image – and digital storytelling engages, provokes, delights and informs new ways of experiencing and reimagining the city.
Students worked collaboratively to create artistic and socially engaged short film projects that were showcased publicly by the end of the course in a mini-film festival at The New School. This course is a program of The School of Media Studies and the Engage Media Lab at The New School.
International Field Program in Hong Kong: June/July 2014
Human Rights and Media
The International Field Program (IFP) in the Milano/Graduate Program of International Affairs is an annual opportunity for graduate students to gain practical experience working in the field for two months. This past summer, Professor Peter Lucas led 13 graduate students from GPIA/Media Studies in Hong Kong.
On October 10th the students presented their human rights media projects at the Social Justice Hub in the New University Center. First, there was a discussion and talk back on the current democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The student projects that were presented included:
The educational portal Disappearing Elephants on the illegal trafficking of ivory from Africa to China created in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund.
A new design of the website for the NGO Helpers for Domestic Helpers with new video testimonies with Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers.
The short film Too Small to Swing a Cat, a remake of the famous 1935 documentary Housing Problems, conducted with the local Hong Kong NGO SoCo.
The media blog on the rights to housing for the NGO Designing Hong Kong.
And other projects including individual films by the GPIA/Media Studies students.
SPRING 2013 TERM:
We started at the beginning, by learning about the history of media making on an amazing fieldtrip. From there, we’ll move to exploring the concept of storytelling through creating and playing with still images. We’ll then incorporate sound to our storytelling experiments, and we’ll learn how to put visuals and audio together, to finally create video projects. On top of that we’ll add some interactive and multimedia tools exploration. The program culminates with a showcase where students share their work with peers, friends, family and media professionals.
Weeks 1-2: Introduction / History of media making
Weeks 2-4: The image / Photography/ Storytelling
Weeks 6-7: Audio / Audiovisuals
Weeks 8-10: Video / Multimedia and interactive tools
Week 11-12: Final project development
Mid. May: Showcase!