This all started when Chris had the idea to make little films and have them be part of the curriculum. His friend Shane shot some sample scenes in Canada with professional actors, and that was the original plan.

Then for fun, we made our own little movies for Summer Intensive Courses in August, even using some of our vacation time to do them. They were hokey but fun.

Then the whole EBS thing happened from December to now. Chris got the inspiration to jump it up a notch. He purchased a kick ass hard drive tapeless video camera that is so bleeding edge that we can only operate it in Japanese. He experimented with posting green felt cloth on the wall and using it as a chroma key.

He played with some special effects programs and then went whole hog. He just painted a freakin’ wall in one of the classrooms green.

I then started fooling around with the equipment to see what we could do. I first introduced Chris to computer video editing, and he was having so much fun with it. I found this suite of programs from FXhome that made green screen keying a lot easier and more professional along with a great special effects program that added realistic gun, smoke, lightsabers, and other effects. I bought this program myself and went wild with it.

So I made Clash of the SuperKids, which is making its rounds on the internet. I’ve shot three other movies that I’m editing now, I’ve written another one, and yet another is in the writing process.

In the meantime, Chris and I have been doing our separate EBSe shows. In a coup this week, Chris was able to get a couple of our students hired by EBS to be on some shows. He’s also preparing a big presentation that he’s scheduled to give to executives at another Korean TV network.

I come to work this morning, and Chris tells me that his EBS show actually used CEA to shoot its green screen scenes and such.

Yes, the EBS crew thought our little makeshift classroom studio was a better location to shoot.

So, are we now becoming a film-based English school?

Oh, that would be fun.