News from Burbank Senior Artists Colony

In addition to December’s continuing classes in exercise, yoga, meditation, drumming, art, poetry and computers, as well as social get-togethers, BSAC residents enjoyed performances by the Irish music and theater group Klawitter and by guitarist Sergey Taranov. Resident Betty Vincent leads the Colony Chorus, which performed for holiday events at both BSAC and Piedmont. The mentoring program (residents mentor Burbank Community Day School students) celebrated the conclusion of its unique project: producing a claymation video. Each mentoring pair collaborated on writing a story, planning the action (via modified storyboards,) designing the set and characters, constructing the set and figures from clay, and filming the action one movement at a time, and adding voice-over dialogue. The project was supervised by Films4Kids, who presented each participant with a DVD of all the one-minute videos. The project gave the students a glimpse of all the different skills that are needed in animation videos in the hope that they will find something inspiring to pursue after high school. The mentors were also wonderful role models for the creed, “You are never too old to learn!”

Contributed by Karmin Murcelo