Digital Media is an interdisciplinary digital art program at Smithers Secondary School.
The program, for grade 10-12 high school students, includes three courses that run in succession as well as a successful all-digital Yearbook Program.
Level One is a course in graphic design, animation and web design. As an art course, the content is a primer in visual literacy including labs on color theory, composition and the visual use of text in graphic design. The medium is digital but the content is visual.
We run both PCs and Macs (depending on the application) and use Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver.
Students work through a series of labs that build visual competency and require (self-taught) Photoshop skills along the way.
After creating stand-alone short animations in Flash, students apply all their new graphic design skills to the creation of a web-based portfolio (webfolio) that showcases all their coursework.
Level Two is a script-to-ship digital filmmaking course. We begin with a shot of film theory and analysis and move quickly into hands-on learning with cameras in hand. building block labs include work with camera, editing, sound, lighting and mise en scene.
After these introductory six weeks, students move into full production on ten minute short films of their own design. Production groups of four write treatments, scripts and storyboards, direct, shoot and edit their own films. All sound foleys are also created in-class with original musical scores and sound editing.
the course culminates with a premiere screening of the films in our school theatre (audiences of 200-300 in past years) and the student filmmakers submit their work to on-line student film sites and to student film festivals in Canada and the USA.
We use miniDV cameras, Sennheiser shotgun mics, direct CD audio capture, Final Cut Pro, Fruity Loops, Sound Forge and other hardware/software.
Level Three is a directed study in topics to be determined by the student and the instructor. options include filmmaking in other genres, (yearbook) publishing, graphic design and animation.