Writer/Director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Life During Wartime) visits Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy for a Q&A session with Film & Broadcast students.

This week, the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival announced its winners, and two Flashpoint Academy Productions took home two honors: Best Cinematography went to Pete Biagi for The Collector, and Best Visual Effects or Animation went to el relojero: The Clockmaker’s Revelation.

Want to see what all the buzz is about? Watch the winning films below!

As July comes to an end, the summer is just starting to heat up in Chicago at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy!

After a beautiful weekend in the Windy City, Monday is here again, and we at Tribeca Flashpoint are gearing up for yet another stellar week filled with special events, great guests, and exciting learning opportunities for all of our students.

All this week, Tribeca Flashpoint will represent in sunny Los Angeles, California at Siggraph 2010, The 37^th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.  As a part of the week’s events, Animation & Visual Effects chair Perry Harovas will be instructing an Autodesk MasterClass during Virtual Siggraph, and will also be a featured guest speaker at the Siggraph Education Summit.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Tribeca Flashpoint welcomes Sean Cronin and Alex Kam from Creative Loafing on Monday, July 26^th, to hear pitches from our Game & Interactive Media students’ Game Design Challenge Workshop.  Sean and Alex will give students their feedback and critiques to help our students develop their project concepts. This will be excellent preparation for later in the week when students from all disciplines present their final Oral Communication projects on Wednesday, July 28^th during FlashPitch, Tribeca Flashpoint’s pitch festival.

Finally, ending the week on a high note, Tribeca Flashpoint will host a live recording session with Grammy-nominated producer Tor Hyams, rap artist Naledge & Chicago-based children’s performance group The Happiness Club engineered by our very own Recording Arts students.  With such great talent serving an even greater cause, this is one recording session that is sure to keep our students looking forward to the weekend.

On Thursday, July 22, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy welcomed Mike Thomas as a part of our Jumpstart Speaker Series.

As a longtime staff writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, Mike Thomas has penned hundreds of features and profiles. Some of his subjects have included movie stars, TV talkers, professional wrestlers, opera singers, human cannonballs, bestselling authors and famous comedians.

A fan of participatory journalism, Mike has burned up the skies in a Blue Angels fighter jet, done aerial acrobatics with the Lima Lima Flight Team, piloted a 600-horsepower stock car around the Chicagoland Speedway and thrown himself out of an airplane at 13,000 feet. He also failed a Navy Seals fitness test.

An occasional contributor to Chicago Public Radio’s award-winning news magazine program Eight Forty-Eight, Mike has reported and written human interest stories and essays on such disparate topics as Rocky Balboa, the art of lawn mowing, a South Side master hatter, competitive sailing, the Irish tune Danny Boy and baseball’s only third-generation major league groundskeeper.

Mike’s national work has appeared in Esquire, Smithsonian, Playboy and on Salon.com. His first book, The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Chicago Theater, was published by Villard/Random House in September 2009 and received critical acclaim in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and many other publications.

On Thursday, July 22, award-winning director Todd Solondz visited Tribeca Flashpoint for an intimate Q&A session with our Film & Broadcast students.

Addressing both the art and the business of filmmaking, Mr. Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling, Palindromes) offered advice on how to work with actors, how to work with studios, and how to stay true to your own artistic vision.

After the Q&A, students were invited to attend a screening of Mr. Solondz’s newest film, Life During Wartime, with the director at the AMC River East.

In Tight Job Market, College Grads Wonder if Degrees Were Worth the Cost
Updated: Wednesday, 14 Jul 2010, 10:07 PM CDT
Published : Wednesday, 14 Jul 2010, 7:34 PM CDT
View story on myfoxchicago.com

By Anna Davlantes, FOX Chicago News

Chicago – Is a four-year college degree worth it? Is college really for everyone?

Consider this: of the 30 fastest growing careers in the United States, only a handful require a college degree.

Physician assistants, computer software engineers and physical therapists don’t need a liberal arts education to do their job.

Employers want people trained in the area, with as much hands-on experience as possible. And they want problem solving skills.

Chicago’s Tribeca Flashpoint Academy CEO Howard Tullman believes it’s time to start more vocational skills. Tribeca Flashpoint is a film, video and digitial media school downtown where students learn hands-on. They get real-world experience, and also learn intangible things like problem solving and people skills, qualities companies continually complain that job applicants lack.

“We’re the only country that thinks its mandatory to go to a four year school,” said Tullman. “Every other part of the world has a lot of different paths, all of which are socailly acceptable.”

Tribeca Flashpoint has only been around for two years, but they can already boast more than 70 percent of their students get jobs within six months of graduation.

Tullman said companies come calling and they don’t ask about diplomas.

“They ask how well can someone do it, how much experience they have and when can you start,” he said. “They don’t care about pieces of paper.”

Some college graduates are learning the hard way that the degree they worked hard to get won’t pay off in a tight job market.

Chicagoan Ashley Sathers thought she’d be working as a journalist now – a full year out of college. Instead, she’s working at a west Loop restaurant.

“I’m from Florida and I moved 1000 miles to go to school here,” she said. “I sacrificed a lot. I don’t have a real job, not one in my field. But moving back home right now would be admitting to more defeat than i’m willing to admit.”

Even though her paychecks are low, Ashley says her bills are high.

“I have [student] loans through Sallie Mae and they’re asking for more money than I make in a month,” she said.

Tullman said traditional colleges aren’t for everyone, and students who figure that out early stand to gain financially.

“If you borrow $150,000 you may never pay it off,” he said. “We have a whole generation of kids learning that lesson the hard way.”

Watch the video!

This week at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, we’re looking forward to a number of special events and happenings both on and around campus.

Monday, July 12, kicks of Digital Bootcamp, our summer institute for high school juniors and seniors. Through this program, parents will breathe a sigh of relief alone at home as their teens spend a week getting an introduction to HD film production, conceptualizing a video game, learning to create animations and visual effects, or participating in a real studio recording session.

On Wednesday, July 14, Tribeca Flashpoint’s President & CEO, Howard Tullman, will speak at the BNC Entrepreneur 2010 Summer Social. Here, he will discuss how new tools and technologies such as Video in Print, Augmented Reality, Square, and the Classroom of the Future will help businesses grow and more effectively connect with their customers, vendors and employers.

Also on Wednesday, Tribeca Flashpoint will host a meeting of the Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) Council.  LEED Council promotes an economic environment that encourages business growth in Chicago’s North River Industrial Corridor and provides skills training and job placements for low-income Chicagoans, and we’re proud to support this important organization.

Friday evening, July 16, Chad Ashley, Creative Lead and Head of 3D at Digital Kitchen, will come to campus for a meeting of the Computer Graphics Society Chicago Chapter. Chad will be showing examples of work he has produced for the Cartoon Network and Target, discussing the creative process and addressing audience questions about the industry. It’s sure to be a great learning experience for our students and all of our guests.

Finally, after such an exciting week, it’s only fitting that we should end things with a bang. So on Friday night, the Tribeca Flashpoint Film Society will sponsor an excursion to the Navy Pier IMAX for an opening night screening of Inception. It seems like the entire campus has been geeking out about this film for months, if not years (check out this Inception/Toy Story 3 mashup on Screen Rant by Film & Broadcast student Mike Eisenberg), so we’re all really excited to get together for what is sure to be a truly epic cinematic experience.

Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy had the pleasure of hosting a number of enlightening and influential guests this year, including actor/writer/director Harold Ramis, documentarian Ken Burns, Pixar animator Warren Trezevant, musician Rhymefest, and many others. This week, we continue the tradition by bringing in two more storytellers to campus to speak to our students and share their experience.

As a part of Tribeca Flashpoint’s Jumpstart Speaker Series, ChronicBabe.com’s founder and editrix Jenni Prokopy is speaking today about her personal journey living with—and making a life out of—chronic illness. This will be Jenni’s second visit to campus, and we’re all looking forward to sharing her story with this new class of digital media artists.

Also today, Tribeca Flashpoint’s Recording Arts students will welcome folk singer/songwriter Catie Curtis. Those of us who have ever had the [perhaps guilty] pleasure of following such shows as Dawson’s Creek, Felicity, Alias, Chicago Hope, or Grey’s Anatomy are familiar with Catie’s insightful lyrics and contagious melodies. On Friday, Tribeca Flashpoint will capture her live for an in-studio recording session and Q&A.

Two great guests capping off another great week at Tribeca Flashpoint—all the more reason to thank God it’s Friday!