If you care about music videos, you are probably still up in a tizzy about Joseph Kahn's Taylor Swift video taking video of the year at the VMAs this weekend, but this is also the time of the year when another music video institution comes around the bend. That is, OMG! Cameras Everywhere. If you didnt know, its a free summer camp for kids to come and make music videos with music video professionals around the world. I just spent a few days at the Los Angeles OMG, and Doug just wrapped up some time with the OMG posse in New York. Basically, IMVDb loves OMG, and so should you.
OMG has been around since 2011, and its become something that I look forward to every summer. It was one of my first really awesome experiences upon moving to LA, and it gave me the opportunity to meet some other filmmakers and make new friends. Most everyone that volunteers is involved in filmmaking in some form or another, and gives their time, abilities, and equipment to make OMG really fun and memorable for the kids every year. The goal of OMG is basically to just get kids to make something cool, and help them create it, no matter how crazy it is! Take a look at the OMG Vimeo page and youll quickly see how the imaginations of kids can come out when they have people giving them the ability to express.
Most of the material youll find online from the OMG world is a music video of sorts - on most days, the promoters of the camp subscribe artists to come out the camp for a day, let the kids dream something up from their song, and then make a full-on video out of it before the day is done. The following nights, counselors edit the videos together for everyone to watch the following morning. Finally, the counselors get together after the camp ends on friday and engages in a weekend long adventure of editing all the remaining footage down, sacrificing sleep and social life to create a viewing party for all the weeks events, followed by a Q&A with the young filmmakers.
OMG has welcomed many artists through the years, varying in genres, and giving the kids a diverse array of music to form ideas from. My personal favorite from LA OMG this year was a more solemn track from Soren Bryce called Sirens. It's a really fun one, where Bryce was shot at the same angle in several positions, and composited together, resulting in a cool, haunting effect, which fits the solemnity of the song. There's a lot more great videos to see, with artists varying from Little Dragon to Jack Johnson. You never know whos going to show up, but you can always bank on there being some pretty wild dance parties happening at any given point in the day. If it sounds like it interests you, feel free to apply to be a counselor next summer in any of the cities on the OMG circuit, which for now are Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, and London.
And as I mentioned before the camp is free for the campers, so donations are always welcome, whether in money, props, equipment, or volunteering time as a counselor. But beware - if you dont come the full five days, the campers may or may not let you live it down.
