| Fostering Future Filmmakers |
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| Written by Sara Celi | ||||||||||
| Monday, 27 June 2011 07:44 | ||||||||||
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Fostering Future Filmmakers One local mom launched a kid-friendly site that's helping aspiring filmmakers create and share ideas in a safe online environment.  Aymie Majerski's a filmmaker by passion, and a mom by nature. This mother of two is the executive producer at Barking Fish Entertainment, a Covington-based production company that's gotten a lot of local notoriety from the film 4192: The Crowning of the Hit King. She can't imagine doing anything else in life.
It's part of why she's passionate about a side project at Barking Fish, a children's Web site called IndieViz. Log on and you notice right away that it's a kid friendly version of Youtube.
"When one of my daughters was six years old, she would walk around the house with a camera," says Majerski of the inspiration behind IndieViz. "It started me thinking
Majerski started teaching film workshops to kids almost a decade ago, mostly at summer camps and through enrichment programs in Cincinnati, California and Colorado. After a few years, the workshops morphed into the website, a place where young students of film could reach out to each other and share their work.
"IndieViz is all about helping kids figure out what it takes to make a film," Majerski says.
Right now, IndieViz has about 500 videos on the site, and it's been up on Internet for about three years. Users of IndieViz are under the age of 18. "Working with kids just reminds me of how cool life really is," Majerski says of what drives her.
Filmmakers who log on to IndieViz create a profile on the site before they upload their video. Membership allows a user to have his or her films to be rated by peers, have those films participate in contests, communicate with other filmmakers and gain access to hours of online training on the nuances of filmmaking.
"It was and still is one of the only websites of its kind geared just to kids," says Majerski.
She's also looking to make a few changes to IndieViz so that it can have a bright future. "We're really looking for this website to become a nonprofit," she says. "We've partnered in the past with UGive and Cincinnati Children's, and I think that makes sense for the next step."
Majerski feels that will allow her to find grant money that can fund a staff to work on IndieViz full time and provide more educational training and workshops for the kids.
"Filmmaking teaches so much more than just how to make a film," she says. "It teaches kids to how apply math, writing and teamwork. There are just so many components to that process."
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| Last Updated on Monday, 27 June 2011 12:51 | ||||||||||
