Design Your Own Program.
What do you want to do? Are you a one or multiple person team? Do you prefer the creative or the business side of your craft? Do you want to learn from someone who is doing exactly what you want to do? How do you get hired to work or make money doing the specific thing that you love? What software or hard skills do you need to achieve your vision? Where do you start?
“We work individually with you to identify goals, make a plan, and achieve your vision before you leave the program. Whether you want to be a professional painter, an airplane pilot, or anything in between … We can pair you with the right professional mentor to get you launched in the right direction”
— Megan Reznicek, Creative Director
Define
Regardless of past experience, the madelife team works with Accelerants at all levels to begin answering their questions and to design a program to fit their needs. The “design your own” program begins with the orientation meeting, where the Accelerant’s creative team, consisting of Mentors, a Coordinator, and other madelife support staff, learn the Accelerant’s ideas and vision to help develop goals for the overall program. Once the program goals are established, Accelerants and their creative team plan out the first project, setting strategy through a pre-project form to outline project goals, resources needed, skills to be developed, and real-world factors such as time, cost, and desired client feedback. After the plan is in place, it’s time to start creating!
Create
Begin! Dive in and learn hard skills such as shooting, audio, lighting, editing and post-production animation to name a few. A series of short (1 – 2 week) projects are at the heart of the madelife program, designed to increase Accelerants exposure to a wide variety of skills, topics, and tools. Be the Director of your creative vision and begin building your portfolios from day one. Whether you are interested in music videos, documentaries, or kung fu films, madelife gives you the tools you need to develop your ideas onto the screen. See for yourself with some of our Accelerants recent work hosted on our Vimeo page.
Measure
Onward and upward. So perhaps you’re first film wasn’t Scorsese, Hitchcock, or Coppola. Perhaps it got 10 views on Vimeo and 8 of them were from your Mom. Or your client hated the results! Good. You experience the first fail of many—now let’s measure that, pivot, and move on. After each project, Accelerants gather critical feedback, internally from self-assessments and externally from Mentors, Coordinators, and the greater Creative Community. Accelerants take in this feedback – all of it – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and use it to bolster their creative chops! Project success is then objectively measured using a post-project form to compare goals with outcomes so Accelerants can see for themselves the success of their project. After a thorough evaluation, it’s time to pivot and move on! Working one-on-one with their Mentors, Accelerants develop a plan and move forward taking their new knowledge to the next project, and onward into their career.
SKILLS
Understand principles of video production including lighting, camera angles, sound, music, and editing effectiveness to convey emotion
Advance your knowledge in the latest tools such as Premier Pro, Final Cut X, and After Effects
Learn how to efficiently and stylistically edit a video to save time and money
Experience professional sound equipment and a recording
CAREERS
Indie Filmmaker, Freelance Videographer, Director of Photography, Cinematographer, Editor, Screenplay Writer, Director, Producer, Colorist, Animator, Special Effects Artist, Production Assistance, Adventure Filmmaker
PROJECTS
Commercial Web Video, Music Video, Short Film, Editing & Special Effects, Documentary, Coloring, Animation, Set Construction, Location Scouting, Cast & Crew Assembly, Raising Capital
“It’s really interesting stepping into the space, having been in the film industry, having run my own video production company, and really translating that to a person-to-person relationship, and I think that’s a really unique experience both for the participant and the Mentors.”
— Video Mentor