Camp Overview

About This U & Maps

About Our Courses

Tours & Activities

Faculty & Instruction

Safety & Peace of Mind

Testimonials

FAQ

iD Visual Arts Academy at Stanford University

iD Visual Arts Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT ONLY | TEEN ONLY
INTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY, WEB

Learn how to film documentaries, edit footage and take professional photographs. iD Visual Arts Academy, the leading summer technology program for teens in the U.S., provides an intensive, pre-college experience in the growing field of film production and digital photography. The two-week sleep away programs are held at top universities and taught by faculty with industry experience. Highlights of the iD Visual Arts Academy at Stanford University:

• Discover filmmaking, photography and editing techniques with industry-grade software and hardware
• Learn from elite faculty in small, personalized classes of just 8 students or fewer, guaranteed
• Tour a major film or photography studio
• Graduate with an online portfolio (and receive an Official Transcript with Continuing Education Units (optional)

With the fields of film production and professional photography expanding rapidly, students interested in pursuing a visual arts career can no longer wait until college to learn camera and editing techniques. Start here and now. The iD Visual Academy offers intensive, assignment-driven film courses and photography classes. Go to Step 2 for course availability and dates.

Additional Tech Programs at Stanford University

iD Tech Camps, Ages 7-17

WEEKLONG | CO-ED | DAY CAMPS | OVERNIGHT CAMPS
COURSE TOPICS: VIDEO GAME DESIGN, PROGRAMMING, APPS, WEB DESIGN, & MORE

We’re celebrating our 13th season as the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier summer computer camp destination. Our popular weeklong day camps and overnight camps at Stanford boast a maximum of 8 students per instructor (you won’t find counselors-in-training or online tutorials at iD) and customized curriculum for beginner to advanced learners. You can register for one or several weeks of our summer camps and experience life on the beautiful Stanford campus! Live in the college dorms! Design a video game! Build a web site in Flash®, program a robot, make your own iPhone® Apps, edit your own video and more with the best brand name products from Adobe®, Apple®, Autodesk®, Microsoft® and beyond.

iD Gaming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT ONLY | TEEN-ONLY | INTENSIVE PRE-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENT

The iD Gaming Academy offers a 2–week intensive program in the dynamic worlds of game development, game programming, level design and 3D modeling. Academy courses are geared for beginner to advanced teens ages 13-18. Use industry-standard applications like Autodesk® Maya®, Adobe® Photoshop®, XNA® for the Xbox 360®, Unreal® Development Kit (UDK), and the Unity game development tool as part of our video game camp for teens. Ready to learn from top faculty, creating your own game development portfolio? You'll also tour a major game development studio.

iD Programming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT ONLY | TEEN-ONLY | INTENSIVE PRE-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

The iD Programming Academy offers 2–week sessions of intensive study in computer science programming. Gain a deep understanding of application development–and a broader knowledge of how programming can be applied to the real world. The iD Programming Academy is perfect for students with previous programming experience who are looking to take their code to a whole different level.

About Stanford University

NOTE: Our specific location on campus at this California summer camp, along with maps and driving directions, will be found in My Account after you register.

Our Stanford University teen camp is famous for its beautiful campus and impressive facilities. The Stanford campus was designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York’s Central Park. Stanford University represents the best that higher education has to offer and has attracted the best and the brightest intellectual minds by offering an extensive selection of studies for over a century. Nestled in the ideal weather zone between the bay and the ocean, our Silicon Valley computer camps at Stanford University give students the opportunity to take in iD’s challenging programs while enjoying a culturally rich, collegiate atmosphere.

General Location: The campus is ideally located on the Bay Area peninsula, a 20 minute drive from Silicon Valley and the San Jose International Airport. The San Francisco International Airport is also just a 20 minute drive to Stanford. Cal Train has a station adjacent to campus. Get off at the Palo Alto station. Students who decide to spend the weekend (most students do choose to stay) will take off-campus trips to San Francisco.

Campus Life & Meals

As part of the full university experience, students will eat in university dining halls and sleep in real dorms. All meals are included.

Stanford Faculty on the iD Advisory Board

Please note that the iD Visual Arts Academy is an independent organization, but we have faculty from Stanford who sit on our advisory board.

About Our Courses

If you want to navigate to our course descriptions, please do so by clicking here. Our courses are taught by professional faculty. Students enroll in one course per two-week session. Learn industry-standard software and use brand-name hardware. Graduate from the Academy with an important skill-set that is necessary to compete in the dynamic field of visual arts. Have you always dreamed about making your own movie?  Or creating a professional photography portfolio? Do something BIG this summer!

Our Courses:

iD Film Studios 101
Visual FX with Final Cut Pro® & Adobe® After Effects®
Professional Photography

Continuing Education Credits

Continuing Education Credits at the iD Visual Arts Academy are available from Stanford Continuing Studies(SCS). The credits will go on file at Stanford upon successful completion of a course at the iD Visual Arts Academy, and a transcript will be mailed out to the participant. Continuing Studies offers a credit awarding transcript generation service to academic programs.

What are the benefits/objectives of awarding Continuing Education Credits?

• Encourage students to utilize educational resources to meet their personal and educational goals.
  
• Assist with pre-college advanced placement through proof of related work.
  
• Demonstrate that the student has completed course content with college-level difficulty.
  
• Enable individuals to have an accurate source of their current CEU activity with tracked proof of completion (Certified Certificate of Completion) by an accredited University program.

Note: CEUs are not transferable as college credit.

Tours & Activities

Note: We tour a real film or photography studio, but studio venues may change without notice.

TOUR: Sandbox Studio

Sandbox Studio was founded in San Francisco, in 1992. Today, with production offices in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, they produce world-class visual content for clients globally. True to the San Francisco zeitgeist, they’ve never seen creativity and technology as anything but compatible. Their unique combination of creative vision, technological savvy, boundless resources and innate style has earned them an enviable reputation. They just focus on taking care of their clients and creating work they can be proud of.

Please note: The Sandbox Studio tour will be for students of Professional Photography. Check back later for updated tour information for our other courses.

Activities

Academy activities are as diverse as the teens who attend our programs. After each day's instruction, you'll take time out to socialize, relax, watch movies, play sports, catch up with friends on Facebook, or game in one of our nightly NVIDIA®-hosted gaming tournaments (with hot new titles like Team Fortress® 2). Some highlights from last summer include team-building activities, group game design challenges, human Tower Defense, kickball tournaments, trivia nights, bowling, Settlers of Catan, and more!

Stay the weekend within the session and you will also have the opportunity to tour local points of interest off campus!

Note: Students may be allowed to travel in groups within local boundaries, depending on the restrictions imposed by the university. Our supervising staff will remain in the vicinity to check in with students periodically. Academy students enjoy extra privileges appropriate for their environment and maturity levels. While we maintain standard supervision ratios, teens will feel a sense of freedom.

Nearby attractions at Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy location include the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Exploratorium, cable cars, Pier 39, and North Beach.

Want to stay the weekends?

We take additional off-site excursions. Most students choose to stay the weekends, but weekend stays are optional. The cost is US $349 per weekend and is all-inclusive.

Faculty & Instruction

The iD Visual Arts Academy fosters real filmmaking and photography skills, in addition to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) development. Students “learn by doing” through intensive, hands-on instruction. Our classes are small, ensuring personalized instruction and allowing students to move at their own pace.

Our instructors vary from year to year, but here are a few veteran faculty from our Stanford teen camps:

• “Big E”: While working on her thesis documentary at San Francisco State University’s MFA program, Big E combines her passion for documentary film with her interest in teaching students the tenets of film production and cinema studies.  Her previous films have screened in 17 festivals across 11 countries and she has developed curriculum for several courses.  Big E has also worked with the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs to design and teach 10 workshops on scriptwriting, digital filmmaking and education  She intends to change how people interact with their community, other cultures and one another through her films.
• “Pixel”: Pixel is a go-to gal for coordinating group media projects.  Her focus on community-driven media and experimental documentary has always attracted her to projects that convey alternative perspectives and represent marginalized communities in a collaborative working relationship.  Her independent documentaries have been screened on television and in festivals across Canada and the U.S.  Her goal is to teach young people how to utilize media tools to raise awareness for a cause they care about, or how to give voice to a story they want to tell.  In turn, they can inspire others to be active.  As a youth media instructor for a handful of organizations in Montreal since 2005, she is constantly inspired by her students.  She completed her degree in Communication Studies with a specialization in Video Production from Concordia University in 2008.  Currently, she is employed as the Arts Coordinator for Studio OFF Interarts, where she organizes art shows for emerging artists working in Montreal and implements fundraisers to support the artist-run center.
• “Smallz”: Smallz earned her BFA from Chapman University in Film Production and French in 2009.  She has worked on several productions that have played at festivals all over the world.  In March of 2009, Smallz went to Brazil and was the co-director and co-editor of “Ritmo do Morumbi,” a short documentary filmed in Sao Paulo.  Her thesis documentary, entitled “When I’m Not Alone,” has won awards all over the nation and was a recent winner of the Loreen Arbus Focus on disability presented by the Emmy Foundation.  During her undergraduate years, she spent a semester abroad in France where she interned at the Cannes Film Festival.  For a year after she graduated, she went to Lyon, France to teach English and work as an assistant editor for a French production company called  “Lesfilmentropes,” cutting experimental shorts and translating films.  She most recently worked as an editorial assistant for an upcoming documentary entitled “Last Call at the Oasis” that was produced in conjunction with Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) and the filmmakers who made Food, Inc.
• “Spur”: Spur has been an avid photographer since a young age with a particular passion for documentary photography.  He also enjoys teaching art and has taught photography at various summer camps for many years.  After receiving his B.A. in Communications and Intermedia Studies from Concordia University, he has worked as a freelance photographer and designer in Montreal, Quebec.  He has also worked as a Curriculum Developer for the iD Visual Arts Academy, and is now pursuing his master’s in Photojournalism.
• “Robear”: Robear began his visual arts education at an early age when he enrolled at Lucchetti Visual Arts High School in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  While at school, he was formally trained in drawing, sculpting, painting and photography.  It was during those 6 years of intensive art education that he fell in love with capturing images on a camera.  From there, he went on to major in Film Production at Emerson College in Boston.  After college, Robear moved to Los Angeles to work in Film (directing music videos) and TV production (E! TV and Univision), further developing his eye for lighting, graphic design and photography.  After winning 3 EMMY awards for graphic design in TV news, he decided to pursue a full time career in photography.  Today he enjoys mentoring new talent while combining his various visual arts skills in his photography projects.
• “Captain”: Captain has worked in the entertainment industry for over 10 years as a producer, host, writer and editor.  He produced and hosted 7 seasons of “The Captain and Casey Show” on Fuel TV/Fox Network.  It is the #1 skateboarding talk variety show that features off-the-wall humor, a world-famous pro skateboard guest list, and cutting edge skateboarding from around the globe.  Over the last 6 years, he has interviewed many pro athletes (including Tony Hawk and Kobe Bryant).  Jeff is a UC Santa Barbara graduate with a degree in Film, and has lived in Los Angeles.  As a video editor, his clients have included: Marc Ecko, Palomar Pictures, Cartoon Network, Dogtown Skateboards and Logic Skateboard Media.  It has always been his ultimate dream to combine his passion for skateboarding and film into a career.

Safety & Peace of Mind

Risk Management

Adult staff and instructors supervise all activities. iD has a policy of never using Counselors-in-Training (CITs).

American Camp Association^® Accreditation

iD Tech Camps is accredited by the ACA at multiple locations, meaning we have met over 300 health and safety requirements. All camps follow ACA guidelines.

Background Checks

We conduct criminal background checks, sexual offender background checks, multiple reference checks and identification checks on all summer staff.

CPR & First Aid

All camps have Directors and Staff that are CPR and First Aid Certified.

Testimonials From Stanford University iD Visual Arts Academy

What Parents Are Saying

“Seems like my daughter had loads of fun here at iD. We can see the progress in her filmmaking abilities, it seems like the instructors really know what they are doing! Barbara H., parent, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“My son has really learned a lot from his experiences with the iD Visual Arts Academy. He now seems more knowledgeable and familiar with the technical aspects of documentary film-making, and we’re proud of him. Scott R., parent, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“I have never heard my daughter be so enthusiastic about a summer experience. Barbara H., parent, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“This was a very successful experience for my son. He learned a lot about photography and also had a really fun time. I felt very comfortable that he was well cared-for and safe. Thanks for doing a great job running an awesome program. Victoria N., parent, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“Very nice work! The kids obviously had a great experience and the quality of the work was excellent! Many thanks! Pamela R., parent, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

What Academy Students Are Saying

“The instructors made the camp for me. Had it not been for their excitement for our success and friendship, the camp wouldn’t have impacted me as much as it did. Zack V., student, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“The instructors are all great and very knowledgeable. I had a ton of fun. Derek D., student, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“The iD Visual Arts Academy was so much fun! All the counselors were amazing, personable, fun and fantastic! They were always full of energy which helped to keep me going. Thank you to everyone for making this an unforgettably phenomenal experience! Ivana C., student, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“This experience has been one of the best I’ve had. I learned so much about photography and am definitely better because of it. I’ve definitely made lasting friendships and memories. Thank you for an amazing summer. Melissa B., student, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

“Loved the program – hope to come back next year. The people were great; the instructors were fun and knowledgeable. Great program! Jacob K., student, Stanford iD Visual Arts Academy

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does this teen camp cost?
The cost for the two-week residential teen camp is US $3,499. Check our site for special promotions. Continuing Education Units are available from Stanford Continuing Studies, for an additional fee.  Age restrictions apply.  Weekend Stays are optional, but recommended, and cost $349 per weekend.  Most students choose to stay the weekend with us.

What are the dates of camp?
Our teen camps run throughout the summer.  Check Step 2 to see date availability for specific courses. You can also see what iD Tech Camps courses and dates are available at this location.

What courses are offered at this location?
Go to Step 2 to see Course Availability, Tuition & Dates.

How do I find out if the course I want is open for enrollment?
View real-time availability all courses by going to Step 2.

How do I register?
Go to Step 2 and choose your course, then continue along the steps.

What if the curriculum is too easy or too hard once my program starts?
Don’t worry – students learn at their own pace, and the curriculum is customized to fit each student’s skill and experience level.  Our instructors work closely with each student and adjust project specifications to be challenging yet fun.

Do I need to bring a computer to camp?
No, students do not need to bring personal computers to their session.  iD provides a computer for each student to use over the course of their program, along with all materials necessary for the course.

Do you offer any non-overnight programs?
Yes, other iD programs include weeklong iD Tech Camps with both day camp and overnight camp options.  iD Tech Camps courses are held at 60 universities nationwide, with topics ranging from iPhone® app development to video game design, website design and more.  The courses are divided up by age range, so you can still choose to have a teen-only experience if you wish.

What if I get sick or have summer school?
Balance payments, less the non-refundable deposit, are refundable up until 3 weeks prior to the start of a confirmed camp week/session. No refunds will be issued for cancellations or withdrawals within 3 weeks of the start of a confirmed camp week/session. All cancellations must be submitted in writing to the internalDrive Inc. office or online in My Account no later than 3 weeks prior to the start of camp. For more details, please see our Terms & Conditions.

Who should I contact with questions or concerns?
Contact our Client Services department at 1-888-709-TECH (8324) or 1-408-871-2227.  You can also email us at info@internalDrive.com.  And, if you’d like a brochure sent to you, please click the brochure link.

Course Tuition (Program options are found on the next step)