In this week’s Jumpstart, Intellectual Property Attorney Spencer Wood provided our students with an overview of the latest developments in copyright, trademark, and patent law, and discussed how these laws will affect them in their future careers.
Mr. Wood addressed these issues and more in this enlightening Jumpstart session:
What are copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secret and rights of publicity and privacy? How do those rights arise? How do they differ from each other?
What is the value of eac…h of these rights? How do you protect and exploit these assets?
What are some of the legal ramifications when these rights are infringed? What constitutes infringement vs. permitted use (including a discussion of the Fair Use Doctrine)?
Case studies from each field comprising the Tribeca Flashpoint programs (e.g., legal disputes involving music sampling, issues implicating film and broadcast, disputes arising in the gaming industry, and legal rights with respect to animation and VFX)
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 37th 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 26th, 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 28th 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 Clubengineered 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.
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.
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.”
