Stop Motion Video by Campers

The girls in our photography class this summer had fun making short stop motion videos.  They would build something out of play-doh and take a series of photographs slightly moving each object in their scene.  Stringing these still photographs together creates the illusion of motion.  Add a little background music and you have a pretty cool video.  Here is a series of final productions from first session.  Take a look!

Twilight with Elsa and Jo

Super alumnae Elsa Claverie and Jo Littleton visited us at camp tonight and brought their ukulele and banjo. They held a special “twilight” activity for campers and counselors who wanted to learn a few traditional songs, and just enjoy singing together. It was a wonderful hour of song, laughter and smiles. Here’s a short video of a round we sang. Enjoy!

Songs for Camp

Lisa Loeb, singer and songwriter best known for her hit song “Stay,” has released a new CD of songs inspired by her time as a kid at summer camp. It’s a fun collection of original compositions and traditional songs all about going away to camp, the friends, the food, the fun, of just being at summer camp. She explains,

“The inspiration was the actual songs based in camp songs. In camp, we have gross-out songs, and ones like the peanut butter and jelly song. One of the things I loved most about camp is that you’re singing all the time. You did sports, and arts and crafts, ate a lot of fun food — you were singing everywhere.”

The CD has some cool guest artists helping out too, people like Steve Martin (who plays banjo) and Jill Sobule. We also like a lot of the great camp lyrics on songs like, “Are You Ready for the Summer?” “It’s not Goodbye,” and “Best Friend.”  If you’ve been to camp, you’ll really enjoy this CD.

You can hear the song “Best Friend” over at Lisa’s website. Check it out here.

Weisstronauts: Live at Rockbrook !!

We’ve been meaning to post something about this all summer, but only just now sat down to do it.  Back in June we had the awesome instrumental rock band The Weisstronauts play a show at camp.  Pete Weiss, who fronts the band, and who knew Jeff from his Chicago days (the early 1990s!), had an open tour date, and everything worked out for the Rockbrook girls to have a rockin’ dance party.  Dance contests, limbo competitions, conga lines — it was non-stop action!

The band’s music is a little hard to describe, but you take 3 electric guitars, bass, drums and the occasional “accent” instrument and roll out surf, country, spy, psychedelia and rock styles.  Very danceable, very up-tempo, tight playing, and fun through and through.

Head on over to the Weisstronauts’ MySpace page and you can hear the leading track, “Fisticuffs,” from their new CD Instro-tainment.  You’ll enjoy it.  Promise.

And here’s one more treat.  During the show at Rockbrook, the band recorded some video, and now Pete has put together a music video that uses some of that footage.  Take a look and you’ll see RBC!  The song is “Seven-X’s,” also from the new CD, and the old-looking footage in the video is from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.  Very Cool.