On Tuesday, March 8th, Tribeca Flashpoint students were among a small group of students to interview writer/director/actor Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy) backstage after his appearance at the Harris Theater to screen his new thriller Red State and lead a Q&A.

Thanks to a generous invitation from Avid, Tribeca Flashpoint students Lyn Niemann and Bryan Sentiere went back stage after Kevin Smith’s Chicago appearance for an intimate discussion on film and filmmaking.

Video coming soon!

Students! Remember: Any college student can purchase Media Composer or Pro Tools for $295 and you will get four years of free upgrades included with that price. To learn more visit www.avid.com/education.

As a reward for being last semester’s top earner of Flashpoint Professional Standards (FPS) points, Tribeca Flashpoint Game & Interactive Media student Emily Greenquist was sent to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where she had the LARP experience of a lifetime.

GDC 2011: The Game
In 3 Levels
by: Emily Greenquist

Genre: RPG
Rating: E for Everyone
Difficulty Setting: Advanced

The 2011 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco was a wonderful whirlwind of introduction and exposure into a professional world that I previously only speculated on.  The scale was as massive as any RPG, and I couldn’t hope to have discovered every unlockable; but by making the experience a game, I was able to customize my path and gain some excellent achievements.

Level 1: Tuesday, March 1^st

Like any good game introduction level, my adventure began with the familiar.  I ran into multiple Tribeca Flashpoint students at the “Learn Better Game Writing in a Day” tutorial, taught by Evan Skolnick of Vicarious Visions.  I committed to the daylong session and learned some great tips on how to connect story with gameplay fluidly.  I later realized that I missed a lecture with Brenda Brathwaite, an accomplished female designer who is currently in a market that I am targeting – Facebook games (recently lolApps, and now Loot Drop with John Romero).  Eager to meet Brenda, she became my targeted GDC end boss and I sought to make a connection in the following days.

Level 2: Wednesday, March 2^nd

Out of the comfort of my Tuesday intro level, I discovered just how massive GDC was.  Spanning 3 buildings, about a ½ block each, with multiple floors, each packed with well over 10,000 game developers; I knew I was in for a thrilling ride.

I immediately used an ally resource, taking Andrew Zurek from the TFP booth (who lead me to a row of Facebook game companies in the career pavilion), and I got to work making connections.  Throughout the day, introductions were made through every possible scenario – at booths, from people looking for directions, with Chad Kent and his great connections, during internet logistic conversations, in many lines, via other students’ airplane introductions, from my awesome producer (Tom England) who set up meetings, by positioning myself anywhere and everywhere; business cards and reel demos filled my status bar at an accelerated rate.

Midway through the day, I gained a special unlockable – Brenda Brathwaite’s email address (via covert connects), and sent her a note, asking if she would be available to meet a budding female designer.  Later that evening, she responded with her phone number and asked me to send her a text the next day to set something up.  The pizza with my fellow Flashpoint students was a sweet end to an awesome round of GDC.

Level 3: Thursday, March 3^rd

I texted Brenda Brathwaite first thing in the morning with possible meeting times, and hoped for the best.  I reworked the career pavilion with additional Chad Kent time and introductions.  I even got to chatting at the Nintendo America booth and gained the “On Like Donkey Kong” bumper sticker achievement.  Joe Budlovsky, Steve Elmore, Anthony Trentadue, and Nathan Hyle have the high score from that booth, by gaining the coveted banana toy achievement.  At another point, they even got to meet John Romero.

Brenda Brathwaite and I connected via texts, soon realizing that our schedules were not matching up for my final day at GDC, but I left the event encouraged.  On the cusp of the final boss battle, my GDC game is currently on pause, and will be dominated in the near future (via a conference call with Brenda).

GDC was a game of rapid and grand proportions.  After a series of misses and hits, I now have a nearly full status bar of priceless business cards, a path to an epic boss connection, and an opened door to the next round of game play: being a working player in the world of game development.

Thank you to Tribeca Flashpoint for providing me with this GDC experience, which has advanced my career in a very real way and has widened my eyes even more.

Tribeca Flashpoint student Lyn Niemann continues to explore the new animated feature Rango during an interview with director Gore Verbinski.

Part three of a three-part Rango series.

Gore Verbinski
The Reality of Animation
By Lyn Niemann

Recently, Tribeca Flashpoint was afforded the incredible opportunity to chat by phone with acclaimed director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Ring). He comes off as a very, very calm person. He’s so soft-spoken it’s as if he is passing down some trademarked formula or is about to let you in on all of his secrets.

He had me at hello.

Verbinski has been called one of cinema’s most inventive directors.

He has spent the last three years working on Rango—an original animated comedy-adventure—a fish-out-of-water story about a chameleon with an identity crisis. There was a year and a half just developing the story and sketches, twenty days on the set, and then another year and a half at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) working on the animation. And while Verbinski is known for taking risks, one has to wonder, why animated film? Is it all a part of the career plan?

“I don’t really have—there’s never been a plan,” said Verbinski, “And I mean, it’s never been, you know—’there’s a career path.’ It’s more been, you know, an intuitive response to material. The reason not to do another Pirate film was there’s no—it doesn’t—it didn’t scare me any more.”

Verbinski thinks that maybe there’s something to that concept of thinking of each film as a paid education each time out. “I’m lucky to jump into something I’m not sure I can do… as soon as you think you know how to do it, I think there’s the potential to phone it in. And so, I just try to look for things that I’m not sure that I can accomplish. I try to hire people who are really talented but maybe haven’t done that thing either. And we all, you know, get kind of juiced when you’re in those situations, because the journeyman thing is really sad.”

“Every now and then, you’ll bump into a crew member and you’re like, ‘Wow, we got to get rid of this guy. He’s just, you know, punching the clock—showing up, doing his job, leaving.’ And that’s kind of tragic because I think there are either easier ways to make a living. You better love it. And you better be willing to crawl through broken glass to tell your story. And I try to share that with the team so everybody feels like their fingerprints are on the sculpture. You just get a lot more out of people that way.”

So, this sculpture of sorts, started out super low-financed, according to Verbinski, just a shoestring team of creative types working out the basics—a year and half on paper to develop, twenty days on set recording actors, then a year and half at ILM.

“People talk about animation,” he said, “like it’s a genre. It’s a technique for telling a story. So, we kind of wanted to have time to kind of slow things down. We worked for a year and half just on the story reel: drawings—pencil and paper, a Macintosh, a microphone, a guitar. There were seven of us in this house—just working on the narrative, the character design, just—artwork, artwork, artwork and script.”

Who is Rango?

“The origins of Rango,” said Verbinski, “started with a very basic idea which was a Western with creatures of the desert—an animated Western. We knew we needed a fish-out-of-water story to kind of bisect that ‘man with no name’ and a ’stranger coming into town’. Tonally, we wanted it to be slightly absurd so, you know, an aquatic creature in the desert—a chameleon—and then from a chameleon—the concept is—a thespian. So, not only literally a chameleon but, his core emotional state is, ‘a guy who can be anything but then, who is he?’ And that was a really great thing to discuss with [Depp] because I feel like quite often, he’ll refer to himself as ‘there’s a little bit of Jack Sparrow, a little bit of Ed Wood, a little bit of Scissorhands in there.’ And my response would be, ‘Well, there’s not much room for Johnny Depp.’ And you could just see him kind of flinch for a second, and like, that’s Rango, you know? With all those characters in there, who is Rango? So, that was really the origin. They came out of, first, the basic ideas like ‘what is the story about?’ you know?”

The story

Out of that 18-month creative process also came nods to a host of other films within Rango. Some of the ones that I caught: Chinatown, Apocalypse Now, It’s a Wonderful Life, Star Wars, High Noon, and many others westerns.

“The nods to other films,” he said, “evolved out of what was a 12-page outline about a chameleon suffering from an identity crisis—a thespian in need of an audience. It started to become apparent that he was well-versed versed in Greek and Shakespeare, watched a lot of Sergio Leone films and Sam Pekinpah. So right from the beginning, it seemed to be a movie where the guy was modeling himself as a hero off of his understanding of the genre. So initially, it was just born out of character and then it became absurd—a fish-out-of-water story—an aquatic creature in this desolate landscape, sort of a ‘film within a film’ from its origin.”

Development

After the team knew more about who Rango was, they needed to flesh out the story. “Some of the things became practical,” Verbinski said, “We needed a plot… It’s not just about a plot. It’s got to be about something more than a plot. And I think once we kind of stumbled across this identity quest, it just seemed like everything about Rango is going to borne out of that—’The Great Pretender’. And what happens when people start believing in it? Things get complicated. So, it just sort of—he arrived via the process.”

And it was a process that included Depp as Rango from its inception. “It was always Depp,” said Verbinski. “I mean—I said, ‘I’m going to work on this animated movie about a lizard with an identity crisis’, and he just went, ‘Fantastic. Let’s do that’. And you know—’How’s the lizard project?’ He was ‘in’ without reading a script or anything. And when I showed him a story reel, he got really excited. But, you know, he was just ‘in’ based on trust and, knowing that, you know, I’m going to try my hardest not to let him down.”

Rango marks the fourth director/actor collaboration between the pair. It’s a relationship that seems to have a lot of synergy. “I think the first time we met,” said Verbinski, “we had a lot in common. We’re the same age. We had a lot of similar experiences growing up—a lot of the same musical influences. ”

“I met him in London in a restaurant,” he said, “and we just stayed there until like three in the morning just talking. And then working with him, you come up with a language. When you direct actors, every act is a different process—and you expect it to be. You evolve a little bit until you get the best out of that actor and you change how you treat one actor to another. Certainly, with Johnny and I doing so much work together, we developed a shorthand—I mean, a lot of times I’ll speak almost in sound effects and nonsensical words, you know, go up between takes—go up and underline one line of dialogue and say, ‘more fuzz here’—’more stink on this one’—ten percent less here’ and he knows. I make straight sounds and it’s like we’re finishing each other’s sentences. ”

Yet, just because there’s an intuitive working relationship doesn’t mean Depp had an easy job. Verbinski was always hunting for that little something extra. “We’ve got it,” he’d say to Depp, “but let’s try two more takes and see if we can break it.”

Verbinski believes that maybe, in the process of “breaking it,” something will occur. And he may not even exactly know at the time what that is, but he knows it when he sees it. And that desire for capturing something special on film is also why he chose to record the vocal performances the way he did.

Production

Even before the film opened, there was already quite a bit of industry buzz about the vocal capture. Veering from the traditional method—where actors are often alone in a sound booth trying to react to another actor’s best take, he chose to film and record vocals with all of the actors together on a sound stage in a process I call “Organic Vocal Recording (OVR)—there was a little bit of set design, a few props and costumes, and then the footage eventually went to the animators who were able to use it to make their animations even more lifelike.

“The movie is traditionally key-frame animated 100%,” Verbinski said, “and the idea was—why abandon a technique that we used in live-action? I mean, we had a fantastic cast. I want to see them in a room together. I want to see them reacting, bouncing off each other. When you make an animated film, there are so many iterations [repetitions aimed at achieving a specific goal or target] that things become homogenized—cold or clinical. It was very important that we get something raw, intuitive… so that audio record—it was all about the audio—trying to get the actors up and off the page. This is much more like theatre. And the actors were, at first, shocked that they had to memorize ten pages a day but then, felt oddly liberated—Oh yeah, remember acting? It was great to see them come and bounce off each other. When we’d deviate from our story reel, things became more authentic.”

Authenticity, Verbinski believes, can also found within the imperfect moments of the performance. “Always look for the flaws,” he said, “Try to champion those moments wherever you can because it gives it some sort of reality.”

The Collaboration

While it was Verbinski’s first time directing an animated feature, it also marked the first time ILM had animated a full-length feature film in this capacity and Verbinski made it very clear that he didn’t want to approach the process differently than he did with his previous films. One of the points he seemed determined to drive home was that every move was about the story first, not the animation.

One of the challenges, he said, was to encouraging animators to work outside of their comfort zone, as well. There were quite a few discussions about how to do that. “I wanted them to stop thinking about ‘the shot’ and to start thinking about ‘the scene’. And these are tremendously talented individuals that I’ve worked with on many movies and on many sequences and we’re always—we’re giving them a live action plate—we’re giving them a reference, and we’re working on one close-up of Davy Jones. So, they’re very well-versed versed in thinking about just the shot. But in this case, we were partners in making a film.”

These talks between director and animators were described as an amazing process which seemed to revolve around one subject—to stop thinking about the film as a visual effects picture. ‘You’re not just executing a shot’, he’d say, ‘we’re telling a story.’ And that’s what storytelling is.”

“Now, to see twenty animators in a small room—first, blink and not understand what that means and then, slowly, through the process—more and more well-versed versed in the dialogue. We’d get up and act out scenes, talk about where Rango is coming from. ‘Don’t be afraid to be,’ he’d tell them, ‘to do—to do nothing. Don’t be afraid of the—the wonderful pause.’ The animators want to animate everything—moving all the time.

He described how he encouraged them to look for the subtext of the moment. ‘Really studying what’s going on behind the eyes’ he’d say, ‘where he is coming from? —Is his bravado false—is he lying? —Is it a knowing lie or is it unknowing lie? And how does that tell—you know, how does that read on the face? And how does he wear it in this particular scene because of the scene prior?’ You know, ‘it was maybe a low point. Is he climbing back up?’ So, having them start thinking about the scene—the scene right in the shot or thinking about the film holistically was a major challenge.”

Verbinski’s determination to go beyond the surface and explore the deeper nuances soon took root. “To see this team of 40 animators,” he said, “really kind of bond together and everybody kind of collaborating and talking about each other’s shots and really knowing what’s going on underneath the skin of the character at any moment in the film—They could describe and define the emotional state of the character. Prior to that they were having mechanical discussions about, you know, ‘Is he blinking on frame 36′.”

Tone

Verbinski also wanted the tone of the film reflected in the animation. “Can we execute that bit of conflict or humor more absurdly?” he said, “and I think absurdity is good and not at all silly. I’m a fan of the Sterling Haydon school of comedy—give your silly response to your serious actor and have him deliver it as if the world depended on it. ”

“Obviously,” he added, “we do have Marx Brothers humor in there too, but whenever possible we’re trying to execute in a tone that is more out of something more awkward. We had a mantra with the animators—fabricate anomaly wherever possible. Pursue the awkward moment. Celebrate it, because otherwise things become clinical.”

“We brought a tremendous amount of live action to this, to animation. I have immense respect for animation directors. It’s a lot harder than I ever imagined. There are no gifts. Everything is manufactured and created. It’s just that —you had to fabricate every frame from zero. Other times when you’re shooting, you’re orchestrating chaos and you’re sort of… trying to capture a moment of truth.”

So, if every film set is a paid education, what did Verbinski learn from Rango? “Short answer is, I’m going to listen to the sound a lot more. We spent, you know, so much of this movie with just pencil and paper, and no—nothing moving. Everything is sound… But when all you have is a soundtrack you’re—we’re putting about 30 edits in one line of dialogue just to get it—create a little pause and to create a cadence. It’s going to be hard for me to just—to not obsess about the sound of people’s voices. I’m actually looking forward to going back to doing something that is immediate and intuitive and not frontal lobe.”

In this review, Tribeca Flashpoint student Lyn Niemann continues to explore the new animated feature Rango.

Part two of a three-part Rango series.

Rango was stunning and wonderful. The film has it all—a fresh story, well-developed characters, and Industrial Light and Magic show moviegoers that there could be a new sheriff in animation town.

Rango is an original animated comedy-adventure which reunites star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski. It’s a “fish-out-of-water” tale about a chameleon with an identity crisis.

The story follows the comical, transformative journey of Rango (Depp). Rango is not like everyone else. He is a chameleon that couldn’t blend in if he tried. From the bright red shirt he wears to the Shakespearean plays he performs with his “friends,” everything about him tells the world that he is an ac-tor!

Yet, after an accident, Rango finds himself faced with the opportunity to discover his destiny in the town of “Dirt.” So why does a chameleon cross the road? To get to the other side of course. And what lies on the other side is an adventure that Rango, rather spontaneously, throws himself into as just another role in order to get himself out of a jam. Conflicts arise when the Mayor (Ned Beatty) asks Rango to be the new sheriff. Yet, what happens when people start believing the act and self-doubt creeps in?

It’s a very interesting premise and there are nods to many classic films such as: Apocalypse Now, It’s a Wonderful Life, Star Wars, and of course, westerns. Verbinski also described, in a recent interview I had with him, trying to bring a “rawness” and “reality” to the film with his use of what I call “Organic Vocal Capture” (OVR) whereby he filmed the actors performing their lines with each other on a sound stage complete with props and minimal set design. Then the animators used that footage to create a film that blurs the line between live-action and animation like never before.

There are some scenes that are so aesthetically beautiful that I lost track of the dialogue because I was so mesmerized. There is attention to the kind of details that usually engage cinematographers in lengthy discussion about lenses. For instance, I have never seen the Bokeh effect—a Japanese term used to describe a blur or haze of an image—animated before, until Rango.

The film is rated PG but younger audiences shouldn’t find it scary. The rating is for rude humor, language, action and smoking. Adults are entertained as well but also asked to ponder some deeper questions like, are we mere participants in a story that has already been written? Or are we active collaborators in creating the story of our life?

What ever you do, take this films advice and “never walk out on your own story.”

Rango opens March 4, 2011.
Find Tickets

Voice Cast: Johnny Depp (Rango); Isla Fisher (Beans); Abigail Breslin (Priscilla); Alfred Molina (Roadkill); Bill Nighy (Rattlesnake Jake); Ned Beatty (Mayor); Harry Dean Stanton (Balthazar); Ray Winstone (Bad Bill); Timothy Olyphant (The Spirit of the West)

Credits: Executive Producer Tim Headington; Produced by Gore Verbinski, Graham King, John B. Carls; Story by John Logan, Gore Verbinski and James Ward Byrkit; Screenplay by John Logan; Directed by Gore Verbinski

In this interview with actress Abigail Breslin, Tribeca Flashpoint student Lyn Niemann continues to explore the new animated feature Rango.

The first of a three-part Rango series.

Actress Abigail Breslin, who voices Priscilla, behind the scenes on RANGO, from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. Photo credit: Stephen Vaughan.

An Interview with Abigail Breslin

By Lyn Niemann

Recently, Tribeca Flashpoint was invited to sit down and chat with one of the stars of Rango, Abigail Breslin. Rango is an original animated comedy-adventure which reteams star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski. It’s a ‘fish-out-of-water” or for those in Aesthetics class, a “stranger-comes-to-town” story about a chameleon in search of his identity. Breslin voices the character “Priscilla.”

We met at a suite in Chicago’s Four Seasons Hotel. And I think I must’ve been half-expecting to see the little girl I was used to seeing on film because I walked right past her as she sat on the sofa.  Her mother Kim sat nearby so, I checked around the room and, after realizing my mistake, I apologized and introduced myself.

“Your hair threw me off,” I said.  I lied. Everything threw me off.  In front of me was not a little girl but a young lady in a tasteful burgundy dress and black pumps. She also didn’t have blond hair. It was still long but it was a very rich, dark auburn. And not the rebellious teen “I colored it myself in the sink” kind of red but a very classy red. And it’s no wonder she wasn’t what I expected. Breslin started this film when she was twelve years old. She is now fifteen.

And while she’s used to the cold as a New Yorker, the day’s temperature in Chicago (-12 degrees) that day was still an adjustment from the balmy Miami weather she had flown from that morning.

“I got off the plane,” she said, “and took a deep breath and I was like (coughing and choking) it’s cold! But I love Chicago so that’s ok. But it’s a little cold. I’m not gonna lie.”

It quickly becomes apparent how mature she seems for fifteen. And she appears to have healthy goals and interests outside of acting besides doing the usual teen stuff like hanging out with her friends. One doesn’t get the idea she’s trying to be someone she’s not and for those reasons, she probably won’t be making headlines anytime soon for unladylike behavior.

I wanted to talk about was “the process.” Verbinski used a rather innovative technique that I term “Organic Vocal Recording” (OVR). In most animated films, actors are isolated from each other while in the recording studio. And it’s a great challenge to capture the mood and feeling of a character in a sterile sound booth. Verbinski chose instead to have the actors perform their scenes together, making use of costumes and props on a sound stage in order to capture the “rawness” he was looking for.  I asked her about this technique.

AB:  We were all in the same room together so we all were playing off of each other. We had wigs on. We all had a little bit of our costume on so it was fun. And being with each other made it better than being behind a booth.

LN: So, were there sets too?

AB: It was mostly costumes and props but for the rest of it we had like, a door or a box.

LN: And how did that work for you?

AB: It was great. A lot more fun than being by yourself where they choose the best take from each scene from another actor and you just sort of have to work it out like that but, we were actually with each other so if we wanted to change something, we could… Even thought you’re dealing with emotions and putting them into animated form, you still have to rely a lot on your voice to tell a story. You really have to make sure that your voice [is conveying the emotion]. I actually forgot midway through filming that we were filming an animated movie. You get the best of both worlds. [You get the feeling of working on a live action film] with all of these people and you get to see yourself animated.

LN: Was there any improv?

AB: I don’t think, well at least for me, I didn’t do a lot of improv because we were working with such a great script already. I didn’t think we needed to add anything. It was already funny enough.

LN: Any plans to work on Zombieland 2?

AB: I’m definitely interested in it although I’m not sure what’s going on with it. But I enjoyed making the first one so, yeah, definitely. And I have a movie coming up called, “Janie Jones” that I sing in actually.

LN: Really.

AB: Yeah, so I’m really excited about that. I actually just wrote and recorded a song with my best friend in New York. And then, I’m also filming a movie in New York called “New Year’s Eve.” … I would love to play Lady Jane Grey. I read a book on her when I was younger and I saw a movie that was made in England in the 80’s with Helena Bonham Carter and so it’s a really sort of tragic story. It’s a part in history that’s really interesting.

LN: So do you have time to go to regular school or are you tutored?

AB: I’m home-schooled. So I do my school online and they grade it. And comment on it. (She says this with a touch of humor that says, “Ugh, school.”)  I was having a lot of fun until you brought up school! (She laughs.) … And then of course, when I’m on set I get a tutor for three hours a day unless we can get more in, which is really fun. (Then she pretends to be her tutor) “Oh my gosh, like, you got done so early! Let’s, you know, knock out a math quiz!”

LN: Any plans to take time off and go to college?

AB: Yeah, I’d like to go to college. I’d like to do both. I’d like to major in psychology but I’d like to do acting as well. Be a therapist on the side. (She says with a wry smile.)

LN: So which films did you watch over and over again as a child?

AB: “The Little Mermaid!”… “Quest for Camelot” and the “Goosebumps” series… Some of my favorite films of the year were animated films. And I think the message of this movie really gets to you. It’s all about working together and saving this town and also, to be who you are.

The Sexy Heroes returned to Tribeca Flashpoint today to record tracks for a forthcoming video game produced by our talented Game & Interactive Media students.

This week at Tribeca Flashpoint, we welcome special guests The Sexy Heroes, Abel Cine Tech Chicago, and Brad Ross of Zynga (creators of Farmville and Mafia Wars); and invite students to special screenings of Happy Thank You More Please and Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie.

Governor Quinn Announces Creation of Illinois Innovation Council
Council will Focus on Increasing Innovation and Economic Growth

Click here for the official press release
Click here for council member bios

SPRINGFIELD – February 16, 2011. Governor Pat Quinn announced today during his budget address the creation of the Illinois Innovation Council, which will help ensure the state remains on the cutting-edge in the global economy. The council, which is chaired by Groupon Co-Founder Brad Keywell, is made up of key business executives across a variety of critical sectors, along with science, technology and university leaders.

(more…)

On February 7th, the Chicago Microsoft Technology Center hosted students from Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), and Loyola University for an Microsoft Imagine Cup submission event.

Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, which challenges students to solve the world’s toughest problems with technology, is the largest student technology competition in the world and is similar to a technology student Olympics.

An assortment of talented students were present. Microsoft employees and partners were blown away by the ideas that the students had been developing for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition.

The passion and excitement in the air was palpable as students pitched their ideas to judges on how technology can change the world. Microsoft employees and partners worked with students to polish their ideas before submission. These students represent the fantastic colleges and universities surrounding Chicago.

At the end of the evening it was team Bloom Studio from Tribeca Flashpoint that won the local Imagine Cup Game Design competition.

Bloom Studio team tackled the issue of environmental sustainability in their game SPERO. SPERO teaches players the importance of conserving environmental resources while enforcing the use of alternative energy solutions.

To accomplish this goal, SPERO limits the environmental resources the player has at his or her disposal, which forces the player to seek alternative energy solutions in order to survive.

By placing the player in a volatile world that responds to player action (and inaction), Bloom Studios’s goal is to show the consequences to poor environmental decisions and reward the player for positive changes.

All schools present submitted their project ideas for the US Imagine Cup competition. In mid-April the selected finalist teams from the next round of the Imagine Cup will be competing in the Imagine Cup US finals for a chance to represent the US in the Imagine Cup world finals.

Let’s cheer our local teams onto the finals!

Mark your calendars!  This week at Tribeca Flashpoint:

• Area employers meet the stars of the class of 2011 during Speed Interviews
• Game & Interactive Media faculty Bob Fuentes represents Tribeca Flashpoint at Engage! Conference and Expo® 2011 in New York City
• Careers in Audio welcomes Guest Speaker Chase Ashbaker
• Careers in Audio welcomes Guest Speaker Steven Gillis
• Tribeca Flashpoint Film Society welcomes filmmakers Scott Smith & John Fromstein for a screening Being Bucky and intimate Q&A
• Tribeca Flashpoint welcomes prospective students and parents to our next Group Tour on Saturday, February 19th