By: Martianne Stanger
For a year or two, my oldest son and his friends have been occasionally dabbling with an interest in filmmaking, and, during the recent COVID-19 social distancing times, that interest grew and has provided hours of fun and experimentation.
Time at home has meant more time for my son to enjoy self-directed online learning using his three favorite how-to film channels on YouTube: Film Riot, FXHome, and D4Darius. Of these three, he prefers Film Riot, because the channel is created by a group of people with clear tutorials that fit my son’s style–action–and there are more posts than on D4Darius.
My son does not watch many pre-2017 videos on Film Riot, because we have found that there was some slight language used in earlier videos which tended to peter out as the YouTubers aged.
For those that like things totally clean, my son has found that FXHome channel never has swear words and that it is good for special effects. It was with this channel that my son recently learned about “cloning” and practiced this skill by creating two of himself in one shot as he made a silly clip called Sibling Wars.
My son also has been recruiting his siblings and Dad to help write, direct, film, and act–sometimes with laugh-out-loud results.
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