In the section, you'll find the latest information about tools to help educators and young people with production.

• Production & Storytelling Tools
• Audio
• Animation
• Editing
• Scriptwriting
• Watch Media

Production & Storytelling Tools

Production Guide: Academy Awards Series
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offers a free series of annual study guides on important areas of production: screenwriting, cinematography, film editing, art direction, animation, and sound and music.

Teaching Youth Media
This book explores the power of using media education to help urban teenagers develop their critical thinking and literacy skills.

Brainglow: Ideas and Tools for Digital Storytelling
Storytelling made simple. This DVD is a perfect accompaniment to digital storytelling lessons in the classroom. It features a multimedia production application, over 25 storybuilding activities, interviews with teen media makers, a theatre of digital story samples made by youth, and an extensive downloadable teacher workbook.

Digital Storytelling Cookbook & Travelling Companion
An extensive and valuable workshop manual produced by the Center for Digital Storytelling. The Cookbook contains complete tutorials including interview techniques, scripting, storyboards, and examples on how to use digital video and audio programs like iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and Photoshop.

The Groovy Little Youth Media Sourcebook
The Groovy Little Youth Media Sourcebook provides tips, ideas, methods and activities that members of the Listen Up! Youth Media Network have found useful in creating and facilitating successful programs.

2002 Listen Up! Workshop Activities Book (pdf)
This free, downloadable sourcebook is jam-packed with activities to help youth filmmakers think about all aspects of production from pre-production through post. These excellent activities were contributed by members of the Listen Up! Network and compiled by media educator Jesikah Maria Ross.

Making Movies: A Guide for Young Filmmakers
Written by The Film Foundation in partnership with the Directors Guild of America, this excellent guide provides easy, fun, step-by-step lesson plans and activities for making a movie with your students. Chapter one is storytelling the best place to start when making any piece of media.

Teen Reporter Handbook by Radio Diaries
The organization Radio Diaries has been giving tape recorders to youth to tell their own stories for years. They've created an excellent and free downloadable workbook with insightful storytelling ideas to help youth "use the small details to tell the big stories."

Media Rights: YMDI An excellent site that provides valuable pre-production and production lesson plans and worksheets to help guide students through important decisions.

A Brief Guide for the High School Moviemaker By youth for youth! A detailed How-To guide for making short movies without breaking the bank (and using equipment you probably already have). Suitable for groups of friends, the solo hobbyist, or A/V clubs.

PSA: A Producer's Guide Listen Up!'s guide to producing public service announcements can even help young filmmakers go beyond the PSA format: it helps youth define their audience and creatively engage them in what they have to say.

YouthArts Toolkit by Americans for the Arts The YouthARTS site is designed to give arts agencies, juvenile justice agencies, social service organizations, and other community-based organizations detailed information about how to plan, run, provide training, and evaluate arts programs for at-risk youth. The full book is available as a PDF for downloading, and their website includes best practices!

Young Filmmakers Club Young Filmmakers Club offers a few "how to" production DVD's for a young audience. The first video covers video camera techniques and the second is on editing.

Apple - Tips for making your movie

Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts
A hip and irreverent basic guide book to the filmmaking craft. It empowers teens to stop consuming and start creating quality work with step-by-step instructions on writing, producing, directing, and distributing short film or video projects.

Digital Photography Workshop Book for Teachers
This book helps teachers incorporate digital cameras into the classroom. Written by well known author and teacher Janet Caughlin, Digital Photography is a complete guide to integrating digital camera use into the classroom.

Audio

Lighting The Darkness
This article from DV.com gives you tips on shooting in a variety of scenarios: in the darkness, when light is flat, with horror films, etc. Pretty basic information, but gives you ideas on how to light your shoot.

A1 Free Sound Effects
Free downloads of sound files with great quality!

Stonewashed.net Sound Effects
More free sound effects and music.

Animation

The Box! by AnimAction
The Animation Production Studio (in a box) by the organization AnimAction, is a creative way to engage youth in media production while strengthening communication skills, critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and the art of democratic dialogue and deliberation.

Animation: Creating Movement Frame by Frame
Discover the amazing art of animation in this guide based on the Academy Awards and the Academy's categories of achievement.

Pixar Entertainment — How do they do it?
Good question. Check out their 14 step guide to creating one of their amazing movies, like Finding Nemo or Toy Story.

Editing

The Los Angeles Final Cut Users Group
Got questions about Final Cut? These are the people to visit.

Streaming Media, Inc.
Good tutorials on encoding and production, including QuickTime and Flash.

Apple Support
Always a good stop to make that is often forgotten — visit Apple's support network.

Scriptwriting

Screenwriting: The language of Film
A really great free download! Free study guides and learning activities about screenwriting by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

ScriptBuddy
A free version of screenwriting software that helps you organize your characters and layout your script so you can concentrate on story, not formatting.

Cinergy Script Editor
This is a free download! It's a PC-based program, but they promise the Mac OSX version is coming soon.

Watch Media

2005 Sundance Online Film Festival
In Park City, Utah, amazing short films are screened each year at the Festival. You can watch them online without the long lines and steep costs.

Media That Matters Film Festival
Year after year MMFF comes back at you with some of the most interesting, thought-provoking independent media you can find. Recommended as one of the coolest sites, with lots of youth media!

Listen Up! Online Collections
What can we say? we're really proud of the hundreds of youth-produced films that fill our galleries and the individual organization's web pages on our site. Be sure to check out featured collections, including the pieces that were selected for Listen Up!'s Best of 2004 Reel.

Atom Films
There are many films here it's almost overwhelming! But on the homepage of Atom Films, top film picks are organized by categories — making it very enjoyable to spend an afternoon watching good media.

One Minute, Jr.'s
Since 2002 UNICEF and their Young People's Media Network have been sponsoring contests and workshops based on the one-minute production format. We like this model tons that we decided to adopt it for our very own 2005 Weekend Workshop! All these pieces are youth-produced and a lot of fun to watch.