Spine Tingler! - The William Castle Story

Objective: Students will watch the historic documentary, "Spine Tingler! - The William Castle Story" and answer questions related to the film.

During the 50's, filmmaker William Castle made a name for himself in Hollywood by creating and marketing films with special gimmicks to bring in audiences. Although his films were low budget "B" movies, he managed to make them blockbusters through his creative use of theatrical devices.

Questions:

1.) What were "A" and "B" movies? (10 pts)

2.) About how many days did William Castle have to film his movies? (production days). (2 pts)

3.) Describe four gimmicks that William Castle used in his movies. (8 pts)

4.) If these gimmicks, or gimmicks like them were used in theaters today, do you think they would have the same success? Why or why not? (10 pts)

Hey Kids! Read the comment! How cool! Thanks Mr. Schwarz!

Garage Band #2 Creating a Song with Loops

Objective: Students will create a short piece of music (30 seconds) using Garageband loops. This piece will have at least four different tracks that relate to each other musically through genre or rhythm.

Instructions:

1) Open a New Project in Garageband using a Loops Template

2) Choose a rhythm track (beats, drums, percussion, bass or guitar)

3) Add more tracks by clicking the Reset button and choosing new instruments of your choice and dragging and dropping the loops. Loops don't need to be placed side by side - you can give your musical passages some "air" which will give your song more definition and sound more composed.

4) If you wish to keep your song and use it in a movie, send the song to iTunes (under "Share" in the navigation bar.

Garage Band #1

Vocabulary/Terms - Incidental Music, Loops, Tracks, Synthesizer


Garageband is a music application for Apple computers. Sadly, it will not work on a Windows based PC, but if you are interested in a PC alternative to Garageband, I understand Acoustica Mixcraft is similar.

Why is Garageband so appealing? Because with just a bit of tutoring, you can create and mix your own music that is copyright free, meaning you can use it for background and incidental music (see Term of the Day for def.) for your video projects, or for anything, really, without fear of being sued for copyright infringement. Plus, you have the added satisfaction of having created something yourself.


Beginning Steps for Garageband:

1) Get a pair of headphones or use your own. Plug them into the RC inlet behind the right side of your computer.

2) Open the Garageband application by clicking on the electric guitar icon on your launcher.

3) A New Project window will open. For your first project, choose Songwriting. Give your project a name and save it to the desktop. Notice that you can change the tempo, key and time signature from here, but leave it as it is for the moment.

4) The Project Window will show 5 tracks, with a drum track filled with  drum loops. Press the space bar to hear the drums. To change the drums, click on the drum loops and hit the delete key. Then, click the Loops button (looks like an eye), choose Drums, and click on different loops to choose a different drum track. Drag and drop your drum track to the project window.

5. Click on the Piano Track. Press th Command plus "K" key to bring up the keyboard. You can change to Musical Typing by pressing the button on the top left.  Click the Track Info button (looks like small "i" inside a circle. You can change the instruments from here.

Play with changing the different instruments and as you listen, think about what sort of genre or scene it would best accompany.

6. Practice recording a track by using the keyboard and pressing the red record button