The Creative Outpost, Inc., has the next of its combined workshop/community presentations planned for Rock City Centre. Matt Powers will be the presenter for both events and will have a “Stories of Little Falls” focus, with “Scriptwriting for Cinematography.”

If you don’t know Matt, he’s a resident of Little Falls, and he’s a professor at Herkimer College, where he teaches writing, acting, film, literature, and sometimes poetry.

His love for all these things started way back when he was in second grade. “I went to Herkimer Elementary School, and they put on a really simple play. There was this messenger position, and I auditioned and didn’t get the part. The day before the play, the person who got the part got sick, and they said Matt, can you do it – and I said, heck yeah, I can do it!”

He said his line and had a great time, and it inspired him. “From that point forward, I realized the power of theater, the power of story-telling, and different mediums.”

Powers doesn’t want the workshop to be too restrictive for the attendees, but he wants them to set whatever story they want to tell briefly in Little Falls.

“Every scene has to be in Little Falls in some capacity. They can choose a genre or a veneer over it as Quiet Place did. I love that shot going up Main Street. We see it’s Main Street, but it’s post-apocalypse. That is awesome.”

He wants to get the attendees to visualize different situations in different ways. “If Little Falls was part of a fantasy setting, what would that look like? If it were part of a science fiction movie, what would it look like? I’m going to require that they all do that.”

For the Community Presentation, Powers wants to summarize what the workshop was in miniature. “I want to talk about storytelling and how characters drive story and what defines a character and how that character defines different elements.”

Powers says that he runs around Little Falls (literally) and has built a slide presentation of locations that he thinks are interesting for scenes.

“I’ll go through my slides and say I find these locations dynamic for these reasons. Not only because each location is interesting for photographic or cinematic reasons, but the nature of the location helps give it more depth to that moment you’re experiencing.”

Space is limited to 50 people for the community presentation and 15 in the workshop. Both are free. To register, please visit https://creativeoutpost.org/course-list/.

About The Creative Outpost, Inc.

 The Creative Outpost is a non-profit 501c3 organization focused on creative content, film, and media education. It is dedicated to teaching the art and craft of filmmaking and media development. It also focuses on establishing the Mohawk Valley as an international destination for media leadership and production. More information can be found at creativeoutpost.org