Resources for Media Arts Students Scavenger Hunt at Lane

Years ago, I went to Lane Community College for a different degree in this same department and it is exciting to see all the new things added to the college since I went here but Mary Jo is still here. The other thing I remember well are the flags in the student first building from 18 years ago. These flags supposed to represent students from all over the world that studied at this college. And of course, the art gallery is something I do remember as well. The nine other items in the scavenger hunt are very new to me.

Since media arts is using the new building, Blue Cyc Wall in the new facility looks good for very creative work.  The other places in building 18 is Mel’s office. I had to visit her one day to find a lost item and we found it.

 

In the center building the library reference desk and computer lab are in different places from where I remembered them before they remodeled the center building. Back in 1970 the central building was used in the movie “getting straight” as well as the library was featured in it. the movie was directed by Richard Rush, who is well known for directing the movie psych out. Plus Harrison Ford was on this campus as an extra actor in the movie. It will be fun to do a movie location scavenger hunt to see what is still original from that movie.

The other new thing that I don’t recall being on this campus are the turkeys. On another college campus I have been to. I really remember one having rabbits all over the property.

When I saw Mary Jo’s office I also saw Judy gate’s, The Art-O-Mat and the gallery in the same building.   As you can tell, I am more interested in being a film geek.

 

The large silver sculpture was kind of fun to take a picture of because the challenge is to not get your reflection in the picture. I wonder if I took Teresa’s lighting class if I tried to light the sculpture, when it be worth extra credit to light with it looking natural.

 

Bittersweet Obstacles

The goal with this information is to make the disability department CAR (Center for Accessible Resources) more reliant on students’ abilities to achieve the work in college. Instead of them trying to justify the need to support the disabilities only. The purpose of anyone going to college is to be as independent as they can with the skills that they are willing to learn and achieve to be able to be employable from the college.

The goal with my education is to know my ability to overcome  obstacles with any work I may be asked to do professionally and use those skills to do a cost effective job for future employers. For any employer, I don’t want to be a frivolous employee.  Also I want to make sure I am giving my best effort to that work. This is why I believe in studying at a college. If I didn’t want to do the work, I would have quit a long time ago on my own if I didn’t think I can do the work or didn’t care about it.

The disability department should be able to stand by the work that any student can do within the boundaries of the education. If there is a problem with the work, it can always be solved since the student is working on accredited work. For example, during the last few weeks I have been trying to resolve a problem with a program I have been trying to learn but mistakes kept happening with that program and I blame my disability somewhat for those mistakes because I kept hitting a wall with the mistakes. However, I did find a way to resolve those mistakes by finding a different way to do the work that is still productive and reasonable for keep on doing the assignments.  I had to change my mouse to a trackball to avoid making the mistakes or errors with the assignment. That problem-solving methods should be a part of the department because most of the time the participation with the work is going to be little adjustments to make an assignment accessible, if the student is willing to do the work.

I had no desire to be a stereotype for a dropout rate. My desire was to know my abilities to do my part until there is no option to find I can’t do the work. The people that should make that call is the student and the instructor because the work can be shown on a professional level within the academic boundaries.

CAR should not be in a position to show problems with the work to enforce a dropout rate stereotype with students. Their dependence needs to be on the students’ abilities to overcome obstacles with any assignment. If the student has a love and passion for a particular study than the Department should be more practical about how serious the student is willing to participate in the assignments because they are willing to do their part in going after their dream with the degree.  The department is not realizing the harm they are placing those students into for desiring to dropouts as a stereotype to save funding.  The department should never want any student to give up on the work to complete a class. Professionally they should never look for ways to get out of work. Their desire for a dropout streak should be alarming but they are not breaking any civil rights laws; they are getting out of professional work that students need.

 

 

 

“Bittersweet” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Five movies that impacted my life.

These movies are in no particular order. Three of them are from my childhood and two others are from my 20s. Okay, I lied they are in order of my childhood to my adulthood. I want to mention, the impact these movies had on my life are anywhere from fond memories to asking questions of myself.

 

The first movie, I remember seeing and liking was the TV movie “Salem’s Lot”. Yes, my mother would let me watch that movie as an eight-year-old boy in 1980.  Known as the the ultimate in terror. I don’t recall how I persuaded her to allow me to watch that mini series but I saw the kids in that movie and remember loving some the effects in it. However, I remember being scared out of my wits when I saw the younger brother being left behind in the woods and the wind picking up and his look of surprise and then the commercial break. For some reason, I remember that to this very day vividly.

 

The Second movie, was seeing “Time Bandits” on HBO or Showtime. I remember loving that movie for some reason, I can’t remember why I enjoyed that movie but when I saw it come out on The Criterion Collection I knew I had to get it. I watch it every year and use quotes from the movie. Two of my favorite quotes from the movie are: “Mum! Dad! It’s evil! Don’t touch it!” And “Slugs! he created slugs! They can’t hear. They can’t speak. They can’t operate machinery.  Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?”

 

The third movie from my childhood is “The Incredible Journey”. I remember watching that movie all the time in a latch key program as a kid. We had an edited pan and scam version of the film on reel to reel. In Latch Key, we used to find a yellow wall to show it on because the image looked better.  A couple years ago, I found it on a website that sells DVDs of it and I haven’t seen it since 1984. To my surprise it was shown in its original widescreen format and I never seen it in that format before, I was so blowed away by the widescreen version because I don’t recall seeing it before.

 

The fourth movie from my adulthood is “Rudy”. I remember seeing it in Portland Oregon in 1994 in the cinema. I am very fond of this movie because it reminds me to keep pushing beyond my limitations. Whenever I feel down or very sad I will watch this movie which reminds me not to give up on my dreams.

 

The fifth movie is “Good Will Hunting”, when I saw that movie in the theater here in Eugene it got me excited about going back to college and trying for a degree It made me think about my abilities and to apply myself to a career. The movie opened my eyes to going back to college in 1998 when I had interest in finding a career.

My first AudioBlog

The presentation that you heard was by two computer voices on my Macintosh. One voice is a British accent in the other voice is an Australian. I have been using computer voices to read speeches for me at a board meeting at the college. With my voice, I talk kind of slowly and the time limit for speaking is three minutes in the meetings. With that time limit it is hard to get my ideas across.

 

One day I was playing around with an older Macintosh and I noticed the accessibility icon in the system preferences folder and I started making it read articles for me than I thought I could write speeches and have the computer read my speeches for me in the timeframe that was allowed. When I thought more about doing this. I thought I was pulling a Stephen Hawking by having the computer speak for me.

 

The presentation is called “An Oak Tree” by Michael Craig-Martin, comes from an old book about optical illusions and other nice stories about illusions. I have known about this story for years and I always wanted to somehow perform the story in some media outlet. When this audio project came up, I started to panic because my voice isn’t going to allow me to be a radio personality anytime soon. I thought this would be a good time to pull out this story. Working with two different voices was very new for me and making them sound like they are having a conversation was a worthy challenge to edit and follow the story.  I thought the story was only going to take three easy minutes but since it is a clever conversation, it had to take longer to develop. I hope you enjoy it and please leave a comment.

 

Justin Blakely

Dream job with the help of FilmEditingPro.com

For many years, I have been dreaming about pursuing a career as a film editor or an associate editor. I just recently found a blog on FilmEditingPro.com that has a very clear mission to keep interactions very professional and just strive to be a good resource for this line of work that I want to pursue. I adored reading about Colin Goudie who was interviewed for the blog. He was the editor for the movie “Rogue One”.  It took him about 27 months to work on that movie. The blog made me want to re-watch the movie again. Just to see what he had to do to make that movie work. There were some other issues he brought up, like how he got there as a film editor.

 

The site dealt with resolving professional problems from dealing with clients who don’t know what they want out of a postproduction service. They had other tips and interviews with other high-profile editors.  The site looks very slick and very organized for people who are interested in this field.

 

Last week, one of my instructors encouraged me to look at moving down to Hollywood, California to pursue this dream job I want to do. By coincidence, I been thinking about making that move to California for some time now because I have some friends in the field and I have family living in the area as well. The blog got me to thinking about other professional positions that I can do at a postproduction service. I will admit that it would sound fun to call myself a film editor but to see myself doing the work of an associate editor sounds just as fun. An associate editor sounds like they prepared the work for the editor, just like a sous chef would do for a chef.

 

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton