The glitz and glamour of Hollywood are shining a spotlight on the Motor City. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is coming to HFCC to give a Motion Capture Workshop for SAG CADETs.

CADET—Cultivating Actors with Direction, Experience and Training—is a pilot program of the Detroit Branch of the Screen Actors Guild open to middle school- and high school-age students who are serious about learning the fundamentals of professional acting. Motion Capture (also known as “performance capture”) is the technique used in many recent movies, such as Avatar, The Polar Express and Sid the Science Kid.

Presenters include Dan Lemieux (performed motion capture in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), Ele Bardha (performed as stunt coordinator or stunt double in dozens of films, including Red Dawn and S.W.A.T.) and HFCC’s very own director of the Virtual Theatricality Lab and winner of the “League for Innovation in the Community College” award, Dr. George Popovich.

Students interested in film will get to see the ins and outs of the MoCap wave sweeping through the film industry. The workshop will demonstrate the relationship between the MoCap suit, the actor and the computer program used to transform the images. There will also be a stunt demonstration to show how MoCap translates from stage to screen.

The workshop will take place February 12, 2011, from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m., in the Virtual Theatricality Lab in the MacKenzie Fine Arts Building (room F-161). If you are already a SAG CADET, bring your membership card; no additional fee is required for those who have already paid for the year. For those not yet signed up, the fee is $10 to get your CADET membership card and attend all of the remaining workshops.

For more information, e-mail Dr. George Popovich at popovich@hfcc.net, or call 313-845-647.