June 16–20, 2025
Open to Bay Area Youth, Ages 12-17
The Shapeshifters Summer Youth Media-Makers Camp is a week-long, hands-on, workshop-style camp for youth, ages 12-17 to learn a variety of DIY, experimental film and sound-based processes from experienced Bay Area-based artists and educators. Campers will come away with basic knowledge of experimental media history and practice, a deeper understanding of visual and auditory sense perceptions, and a foundational toolbox to continue making creative, DIY moving image and sound projects using simple and accessible resources and processes.
Schedule of Activities
Day 1: Pre-Cinema Optics
(Kathleen Quillian)
Campers will learn about and explore ways to create moving images without contemporary motion picture technology using mirrors, lights, lenses and various optical tricks and devices including zoetropes, phenakistoscopes, magic lanterns, and more.
Day 2: Found Sound
(Cheryl E. Leonard)
Campers will learn how to produce and record sounds using natural and manmade found objects and various kinds of microphones and sound-making techniques.
Day 3: Material Cinema/Direct Animation
(Ellie Vanderlip)
Campers will use inks, pens, needles, sand paper, bleach and other household materials to paint, scratch, puncture, and otherwise manipulate the surface of 16mm film to make moving images without a camera.
Day 4: Non-Toxic, Cameraless Filmmaking/Phytography
(Gilbert Guerrero)
Campers will continue exploring ways to make camera-less films using non-toxic, biodegradable materials, plants, sunlight and time.
Day 5: Make Your Own Synthesizer
(Kirk Pearson)
Campers will learn about basic circuitry and electronics while building their own working synthesizer using oscillators, filters, LFOs, amplifiers and other easily-accessible component parts.
Camp Details
Location: Shapeshifters Cinema, 567 5th St. Oakland, CA
Dates: Monday, June 16—Friday, June 20, 2025
Camp Hours: 9am-3pm, every day
After-Camp: 3-5pm (as needed, for an additional charge of $12/hr.)
Final showcase: Friday June 20th, from 3-4pm.
Cost: $550 (includes all workshop materials)
Optional add-on: $50/week for lunch (prepared by our on-site café, includes made-to-order sandwiches, salads and beverages)
Daily Schedule (9:00am-3:00pm)
8:45-9:00am: Campers arrive
9:00-10:00am: Warm-up with creative responses to daily prompts in sketchbook/journal
10:00-10:15am: Break/Snack
10:15-11:30am: Artist Talk/Slideshow/Demo
11:30am-12:15pm: Lunch
12:15-2:45pm: Workshop
2:45-3:00pm: Clean-up/Pack-up
After-Camp Activities (3:00-5:00pm)
Campers should bring:
Shapeshifters will provide:
About Our Instructors
Kathleen Quillian (She/Her) is Shapeshifters Cinema's Co-Founder and Director of Programming. In her own studio practice she works primarily with found imagery, collage and stop-motion animation. She is particularly fascinated with chronophotography and pre-cinema optical devices from the 19th century and loves sharing the history, science and technology of this time period with young people as an accessible way to begin understanding the basis of our media-saturated world. She is also the mother of two tween girls whose artistic creations constantly amaze and delight her. https://kathleenquillian.com/
Cheryl E. Leonard: (She/Her) is a San Francisco-based composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and often feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales. Leonard uses microphones to uncover and explore micro-aural worlds within her sound sources, and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices she discovers. Her recent work focuses on environmental issues, especially climate change in the polar regions and California and the extinction of species. She has composed for dance, theater, film, and video; designed sounds for exhibits in science museums; and developed works with climatologists, oceanographers, and biologists. https://allwaysnorth.com/
Ellie Vanderlip (She/Her) is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker and educator. She is Co-Director of Education and Outreach at Shapeshifters Cinema, on the board of directors at the San Francisco Cinematheque, and maintains a studio at Artists' Television Access. She loves empowering pupils with hands-on knowledge of cameraless filmmaking techniques and has taught her Material Cinema Workshop at the Exploratorium, San Francisco State University, St. Mary's College, the University of San Francisco, and of course at Shapeshifters. Her primary focuses are found footage experimental documentary, material cinema, and expanded cinema performance. https://www.15thavenuefilms.com/
Gilbert Guerrero (He/Him) is Shapeshifters Cinema's Co-Founder and Director of Operations & A/V Tech. He has spent the better part of the past three decades in and around microcinemas in the SF Bay Area and NYC, as an audience member, volunteer, educator, board member and/or director. He has taught a variety of subjects to young people including web programming, digital animation and experimental sound design at Artists' Television Access and Diablo Valley College. He is also a self-taught, professional chef and brewer whose culinary creations can be experienced every Saturday at Shapeshifters Café. https://gilbertguerrero.com/
Kirk Pearson (They/Them): is a composer, creative engineer, multimedia artist and educator currently living in Berkeley, California. Pearson's studio practice involves writing for unconventional musical instruments, and every once in a while, inventing new ones. Pearson is the founder and creative director of Dogbotic, a studio and audio laboratory that creates music and sound design for all sorts of multimedia projects, from feature films to interactive installations. Through Dogbotic Labs, Pearson teaches a variety of hands-on, experimental, audio and visual workshops including homemade synthesizers, experimental photography, and media theory. https://kirkpearson.com/
About Shapeshifters Cinema
Shapeshifters Cinema provides a venue and support for contemporary artists working with experimental and artist-made film, video, sound, music and other types of mediated performance. We host screenings and performances by local and visiting artists in our intimate 40-seat theatre and offer workshops on a variety of experimental and DIY moving image and sound production.
Questions/Comments: contact at shapeshifterscinema dot com