SOMA Media Lab 2023
Launched in September 2023 as part of a new arts education program entitled Studio Burgdorff, the goal of SOMA Media lab was to expose teen participants to filmmaking while crewing in the field to complete short, cross-genre videos that represent the world as they see it.
Students learning objectives included:
Mining visuals from personal memories, expressing your own voice, and focusing on character development or a moment rather than plot with a beginning, middle and end.
Exploring how to film images, gather sound, how to make psychoacoustic connections, how to make cinematic choices to elicit emotion, tone and tell story, how to compose/design to picture and how to edit images.
Learning movie structure, genre styles, crew roles, and collaboration. Experience real-world on-set experience.
About the Instructor:
Erin Harper is a South Orange resident, filmmaker, and mother of twins. Whether writing a new series, directing an award-winning short film, producing a Sundance feature narrative, or guiding the neighborhood kids in their own productions, Erin loves to experiment within the layers of multiple media to discover new stories. Erin’s favorite place to play is inside of the workshop settings she has created for youth from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to Colorado and now in her home village; these creative learning labs ignite and deepen connections to self-expression, community, and personal passion. To learn more about Erin and her work, click here.
The students films’ were first screened on December 8, 2023 to a local audience at the Woodland as part of a Maplewood Film Society film screening.
