Mic placement on acoustic guitar and vocals:

Gefell M930 on vocal and Neumann KM 184 on acoustic guitar
both with Great River mic pres and Crane Song compression:

Royer 121’s in Blum for the room:

Paul Taneja:

Myself (Bernie) going over signal flow (and the fact that I need a new haircut!) with students for the Nick Bognar Tracking Session at Flashpoint Academy:

In Studio Recording I section A, students tracked “Nick Bognar” in the main music control room and studios. Students were responsible for instrument placement, mic placement, signal flow, sound check, monitor and cue. This experience confirms that hands on learning through collaboration is the most effective form of instruction for digital media arts. The session went down perfectly – the students are top notch!

Mic placement on drums:

Mic placement on drums completed:

Bock 195 on vocals:

In Studio Recording I section B, students tracked “Deuce” in the main music control room and studios. Students were responsible for instrument placement, mic placement, signal flow, sound check, monitor and cue. This experience confirms that hands on learning through collaboration is the most effective form of instruction for digital media arts. The session went down perfectly – the students are top notch!

Mic Placement on drums:

195s for overheads, 421s on toms, 451s on hat & ride

km 184 on acoustic

451s on congas

I am not done with this internship idea yet so hold on.

Another former MBC intern is my friend Jay Smith. Jay came to the museum as a college senior at Indiana University. At school he was a TV major and had a clear plan on how to get a job in the business. His first step was to get an internship at the museum.

The museum internship was critical to Jay’s overall plan because MBC president Brice DuMont was also a correspondent and producer at Chicago’s PBS affiliate WTTW. Jay knew that if he got in good with Bruce he would have a better shot at getting one of WTTW’s paid internships after graduation the following year.

Sure enough his plan worked. He parlayed his free MBC intenship to a paid internship the next summer. When that internship expired WTTW hired him full time on their flagship news program, Chicago Tonight. 18 years later he is going strong and is now the managing producer of that program. Over these 18 years he has also written and produced many other programs and documentaries for WTTW, but it all started with a vision he had while in college on the steps he needed to take to get the job he wanted.

So, like former intern Dan in my previous post, this too comes full circle. When I got my Flashpoint job I told Jay he needed to do a piece on the school- the first new college in Chicago in 40 years. He said he would when the time was right. The time was right this past Tuesday. Mayor Daley did the official ribbon cutting at Flashpoint and that evening on Chicago Tonight there was a piece on Flashpoint Academy and brief snippet of the dumb filmmaker. A quid pro quo of sorts.

PeterH

A few weeks ago I wrote about my internship at a TV station and how valuable it was to my professional development. Today I want to talk about the farther reaching value interns can have.

I have said many times that before my Flashpoint gig I have had only one “real” job and that was from 1987-1989 when I worked for the Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC). At the museum we were lucky enough to have several good interns and many of us remain friends to this day.

Our first intern was Dan Lerner. Hard to believe it now, but he was a senior in high school when we met. Your classic over achiever,Dan was writing for the ACLU newsletter and looking to get his foot in any door when he showed up at the museum. Frankly, I don’t remember what he did- he probably watched a lot of old TV and recorded it into our archives. Mostly we talked sports- such great conversations as who would you rather have in centerfield Kirby Puckett or Dale Murphy (years later Dan finally agreed with me about Kirby Puckett.) Dan was a good guy and worked hard and we liked having him around.

The night before he went off to college Mike Mertz, MBC archivist, and I took Dan out on the town and said goodbye. (Out on the town in this case means we grabbed a pizza and went to the batting cages. C’mon the museum only paid me $7.25 and hour and only so much town can be had for that kind of coin.)

Dan and I have remained friends over the years. Today he is a political consultant and filmmaker. I am helping produce his film (four years+ in the making) about rock-a-billy legend Sleepy LaBeef. This weekend Sleepy is performing with lots of other stars at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a concert for Jerry Lee Lewis. Dan will be there, cameras rolling, getting the show and hopefully nabbing interviews with Kris Kristofferson (who saw Sleepy during his college days at Columbia University), Chrissy Hynde and others.

My point with this post is that the benefits of internships work both directions. 20 years ago Dan was a real help to us at the museum and today I get to reciprocate by helping him with his film. Though he has done all the heavy lifting on the film I will get a nice credit and more importantly feel we have come full circle from his days as our intern.

Tomorrow another intern story.

-PeterH

Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley appeared in the flesh but it was his virtual self that cut the digital ribbon at a ceremony today officially recognizing Flashpoint Academy’s presence as the latest degree granting college in the city. Stuffed into 2 floors of a Chicago Loop office building, Flashpoint, The Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, is loaded with the same technology gear found in the best film, game development, visual effects, animation and recording arts studios. The sound boards, editing stations, screening rooms and stage sets are merely the ingredients. The chefs in this digital kitchen include world-class professionals who share their knowledge with students in this hands-on environment. No fire starts without a spark or grows without some flame fanning. With his long history of helping businesses catch fire, Howard Tullman, President & CEO, introduced the Mayor and shared his enthusiasm with visiting state, national and international guests joining in the ribbon ceremony. Built in a remarkable 100 days over summer 2007, Flashpoint is completing its first semester of operation with its inaugural class. Prospective students are finding the Duo Consulting built website via strategies ranging from bus advertising to search engine pay-per-click campaigns. With the expansion of digital entertainment as a trillion dollar worldwide industry, talented graduates from Flashpoint Academy should have opportunity waiting for them.

 Source:  Duo Consulting Blog

Great news from Florida! Tiffin, a film directed by Chor Ai Lene, won first place in the Narrative Shorts category of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Last month [Oct. 2], I blogged on my work as Sound Designer for this beautifully photographed story “that traces the changes in the landscape, hearts and minds of vibrant Malaysia over the span of a decade.” Congratulations to the Ai Lene and the crew.

Ai Lene is also working with Flashpoint as Editor on Paula Froehle’s short film, The Collector, which is currently in postproduction.

I have seen the future, and it is here.
What do I mean by that, you ask?
If it’s the future, how can it be here?
Isn’t that the present? Yes, but also
no. Let me explain…

I have been getting familiar with the new
Sandbox 2 editor that comes with the
demo for Crysis, the new game from
Crytek and EA that comes out in 2 weeks
or so (November 16). In fact, the image
that is at the head of this post was
rendered in real-time with this game
engine (click to make larger).

It is, quite simply put,
unlike anything you have ever seen. It is
an animation program, real-time renderer,
game modder, shader creation tool and all around
incredible software accomplishment all wrapped
up in a free (yes, FREE) software download. In this one
program you have everything you need to create your
own animated movie. Really. I am dead serious. You have
characters (which can be totally recreated with external
applications like Softimage XSI and others), lip-synch tools
motion capture tools, motion detection/tracking algorithms,
terrain creation and texturing tools, vehicle dynamics,
cloth dynamics, ai, real-time shadows, volumetrics… Need I go on?

Of courase, the one thing you don’t have, that you have to provide,
is a great story. Funny thing is, that has always been the hardest
part to get! Well, it still is. But now, assuming you have that, a great
script, great voice actors, etc., you can achieve what, literally, last week
was impossible. You can create a cinematic-quality movie with limited
hardware and software cost.

So, if this is here now, what is the future part, Perry?

It’s only going to get better from here, that’s the future part. More and
more of these type of programs will no doubt be making debuts
in the years to come. As real-time rendering gets more sophisticated,
it will completely replace off-line rendering. After all, why wait when you
don’t have to. For those of us that use the mental ray renderer, goodness
is already here, because mental images has ported their entire renderer
to run on nVidia cards and within the framework of the Cg shader language.

The future is indeed bright and shiny!

Pinch me all you want, because I am not dreaming anymore.
I had foretold this day about 5 years ago, and shared it
with some of the people I worked with at the time. We all agreed it
would happen some day.

Looks like someday is today! Here’s to tomorrow…