BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

Both sides of the camera

By Mia Hirshfeld, age 10 | February 1, 2016

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Mia Hirshfeld, a fourth grader at West University Elementary School, loves to act and make movies.

I started acting in first grade. Before acting, I took music lessons, which I did not like doing. One day I exited the door of my music class and saw a flyer for Joy Kids Studio movie-making classes. My mom soon signed me up and before long I was acting in front of a camera.

I have learned the entire process of making movies from start to finish. In class, we come up with ideas for skits and commercials, and then we write the scripts. After that, we act them out in front of a green screen and add in the different backgrounds that go with each scene. Kids take turns directing the scenes, shooting them with the video camera and acting. We learn how lighting, camera angles and props affect how the movies and commercials turn out.

For the past few years I’ve done many shows with Joy Kids. In one video that I created called Into the Painting, we got trapped in paintings at an art museum. Something funny about Into the Painting was that the movie Into the Woods came out right after that. Copy cat! Overall, my favorite mini movie I made was probably The Town, where my character was the first person to risk life to get out of an awful town.

Closer to the end of my third grade year, I decided I wanted to do more acting. My mom signed me up for the advanced acting class. One weekend we even got to drive all the way to Galveston to shoot a music video on the beach. It was so fun to shoot the video on location.

This year I have expanded my interest in acting even more. I played Peppermint Patty in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown with Wildfish Theatre and now I am taking private lessons with Mandy Rubio, an acting coach at Joy Kids. She is helping me perfect my acting skills. Someday I hope to get an agent. It’s time to take it to the next level!

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