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!

This summer, Steelcase and Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy collaborated in the research and launch of the node student learning pod.

Engineered specifically for today’s collaborative classrooms, the node allows students to move more, store more, and fit more into their learning space.

As part of the launch campaign for the node Classroom Chair, Flashpoint developed this augmented reality tool to illustrate the node’s easy, 30-second, tool-free assembly.

Turn on your webcam to try the node Augmented Reality demo! http://node.tribecaflashpoint.com

The 2010 Chicago Reader “Best of Chicago” poll concluded this week with Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy taking first place in the “Best College” category. View the results here!

Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy Director of Core Studies, Francine Sanders, is featured in today’s New York Times Chicago News Cooperative.

The piece covers Francine’s time as a civilian investigator for the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards, or O.P.S., now the Independent Police Review Authority, and focuses on her biggest case: the torture allegations against decorated Vietnam War veteran and former police commander Jon Burge.

Read the article

After Fox News Reporter Lilia Chacon’s recent visit to Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, first year Game & Interactive Media student Michael McDowell shares his reflections on her story.

Lilia Chacon was a speaker for Tribeca Flashpoint’s Jumpstart series, which brings industry professionals to campus to share their experience and expertise with students.

Fox News reporter Lilia Chacon recently visited Flashpoint and delivered an eye-opening speech titled, “Don’t wear high heels to a gang war.” While the title is interesting by itself, the inspiration behind the story was just as fascinating.

Ms. Chacon recalled a moment in her career when she was covering a story on a gang shooting in a Chicago neighborhood. While broadcasting from the crime scene with a heavy police presence, the suspects came back and opened fire on the crime scene area. Consequently, a shootout between the police and the suspects ensued.

The cameraman continued to roll despite the haze of bullets flying through the air, while Ms. Chacon unrelentingly delivered the report as they followed close behind the policemen. After a few exchanges, the suspects fled to a nearby alley.

The police pursued with Ms. Chacon and her cameraman close behind. They got to the end of the alley that was shaped in a form of a T. Suddenly, a car swerved in on one side as four men hopped out and a police car swerved in on the opposite end with three officers in it. Lilia Chacon and her faithful cameraman were stuck in the middle of another gunfight!!!

While I enjoyed the story, the real treat of Ms. Chacon coming to Flashpoint was the personal testimony of her passion for delivering the facts to everyday people like you and me. Her message seemed to transcend the field of Film & Broadcast. Being a first year Game Development student I felt just as stimulated as any Film & Broadcast student there.

As she continued with her speech, she revealed the sacrifice that her career demands. She spoke on her lack of a social life and how she often has to disappoint close friends and family all in the call of duty. While I listened to her talk about her life, I was inspired by her story because I feel we take for granted the passion, hard work, resourcefulness and dedication it takes to make it in the so-called glamorous career of news reporting. We rarely get to see the grind that it takes to succeed in a career as demanding as journalism.

During her speech I also realized how important the work is that Ms. Chacon and other reporters like her do. Hearing what goes on behind the camera allowed me to have a better respect for her and her craft. During my commute home, I briefly reflected on how informed and well versed I am on current events, and acknowledged it’s all a result of the hard work that Lilia Chacon and her colleagues put into reporting. Their constant digging, pursuing and following up reaps the reward of a more informed population and satisfies the passion of these news professionals.

I am not sure if reporters hear this as often as they should, but thank you. Society deserves to be informed and to know the truth, regardless of how ugly it is.

By the way, the shootout story ended with her winning an Emmy (1 of her 6). I hope she continues the great work that she does and keeps telling the story, whatever it may be.

- Michael McDowell

Steelcase President Jim Keane and the Steelcase design team introduce the new “Node” Student Learning Pod at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy.

From Steelcase.com :

In reinventing the traditional classroom chair, we didn’t go back to the drawing board. We went back to school. We found classrooms that were static, allowing only for passive, one-way learning. We met educators with a desire to implement multiple pedagogies to support multiple learning styles. But today’s classrooms are still unresponsive and unsupportive.

The node chair is mobile and flexible. It’s designed for quick, easy transitions between one mode to the next. With node, a classroom can flex from a lecture-based mode to a team-based mode, and back again, without interruption.

Watch the Video from Flashpoint Students and Faculty

On May 29, 2010, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy bid farewell to the Tribeca Flashpoint Class of 2010.

In Tribeca Flashpoint’s Spring 2010 Production-In-Action, REACTOR, students, faculty, and staff exercised their creativity and collaboration, combining the talents of all disciplines to make an immersive “Pervasive Game” experience.

On Friday, April 16, 2010, journalist Lilia Chacon spoke to students as a part of Tribeca Flashpoint’s Jumpstart Speaker Series. Film & Broadcast student Thomas Merry shares his reflections.

I recently attended a Jumpstart presentation by Lilia Chacon. Lilia, an accomplished reporter for Fox News Chicago, shared her path to success with me and my fellow Tribeca Flashpoint students.

She told several stories of her experience as a journalist, including how she wore high heels to a gang fight. But one story that specifically stuck with me was when she was still in school, one of her teachers mentioned that she had a misplaced sense of perfectionism.

I took that personally because in a way I have always been a bit of a perfectionist. I don’t want to make any mistakes and sometimes I become over critical of myself. Especially in writing a story or even directing in my studio production class, there is always something I wish I did better and tend to dwell on it too much.

For example, when I am writing a story, I think it is the best story ever; it feels perfect. When I sit down and read the finished product, all of a sudden it is a crappy story. I tend to nitpick. I start wishing I took another angle, or didn’t put a certain element into the story.

Or, when I recently directed in studio production class, I felt like I did a great job when I was done. However, when I watched it, I started picking out shots I didn’t like and lost confidence in myself because of this need to be perfect.

So during the Q&A session after the presentation, I asked Lilia how she kept from being over critical of herself. Lilia responded that you just move on to the next project, not worry about the past, and just keep moving. This hit home with me. You’re going to make mistakes and the best way to get by is to learn from them and move on.

I was surprised at how interested I was, and thought this was the best Jumpstart I have attended in my brief time here at Tribeca Flashpoint.