Apple Film Camp Review

I am always looking for fun activities for my children that don’t cost much.  So when I heard about Apple Film Camp earlier this summer I signed my 12 year old up.  It is a free camp put on by Apple retail stores to teach kids ages 8-12 learn the ins and outs of iMovie and how to make a film.  The camp spanned two weekdays, which were spent making and editing a film.  Then on Saturday there was a Film Festival and all the kids showed the movies that they had made.

My son enjoyed playing with all the cool Apple gadgets.  He got to use an iPad and a Macbook, and proceeded to tell me on the way home how great the Apple products (none of which we own) are.  So obviously Apple’s marketing strategy of offering these camps for free is a good one! Apple also gave the kids t-shirts and nametags, and the staff did a great job of being enthusiastic and encouraging the children.  There were 3 staffers for the 8 kids in the group, so there wasn’t a lot of waiting around for help.

He also did learn about movie making, and made a movie, added a garage band soundtrack, titles and credits.  The Film Festival was interesting, because the kids movies ranged from cute to boring.  It was very obvious by the end of the festival that editing made all the difference.  The kids who did a lot of editing and used short takes ended up with much better movies than the ones who left in very long takes with few edits.  I think seeing all the movies back to back made an impression on my son and gave him a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn’t.  I think he learned from the camp and it was worth doing, and hopefully he will keep playing around with movie making.