Visual Music went AMAZING! We were done 45 minutes early, and I honestly think ours turned out the best overall. There were only a couple of shots that were weird (out of focus or missed cue) but the set looked amazing and I can’t wait to post it up here.

I also finished the research report last Friday, also very exciting. I am super happy to have that done with. I just have to do a 10 min presentation tomorrow on my topic and then I will be done with that…until next quarter maybe. I think we are going to have our papers influence a project next quarter? I don’t know. I am excited no matter what.

We also started our Studio 2.0 Project. We are in groups of 6 now and we are working with 2 plays each. They are short 10 min plays that we have to adapt to television. I am the Production Designer for one of them so I get to pretty much design the set. I built a little scale model of the studio and I will be building a small size set to go inside of it. We are presenting both of our proposals on Thursday and then I think our teacher and classmates will choose one that we move forward with. I am excited because we are supposedly getting a production budget of about $125-$150. Boom. I hope mine gets picked, although I am pretty excited about the other one as well, I just don’t have a big part in that one.

Anyway, check out my research blog (It’s a lot of words right now but will have some multimedia in the near future) here.

Alright, back to Edward Murrow research.

-Steven

Today we pitched our topics for our research papers (which are going to be 10-15 pages and due in less than 4 weeks!!! AH!) and I am going to be writing about Edward Murrow. If you saw Good Night and Good Luck, that movie is about the guy that I am writing about. He is super cool and pretty much single handedly revolutionized broadcast news and even television as a whole. He also took on McCarthy with his popular broadcast that led to the release of an Army man who was imprisoned because his father, supposedly, used to be a subscriber for a magazine a long time ago but had only recently been publishing pro-communist stuff AND he pretty much directly challenged McCarthy’s sanity.

Way cool dude. We will see if I can bust this paper out in record volume and time.

Peace.

Last Thursday and Friday we did our first productions. We each had to move around to each station and operate the equipment and even be the host and guest of our interview show. I had fun working the cameras and being the guest on the show but I really, really liked directing and working the switcher. I will try to post some of our stuff online soon.

This week our class got into pairs and split the pairs into 2 so that half of the pairs this week are doing short pieces while the other half works in the scene shop and vice versa next Thursday. Our assignment is to go a little further from the improv interview thing to a rehearsed piece. My friend Tabby and I are writing a short piece which takes place in a bottomless pit. I am excited because we flipped a coin and I get to direct while she and another friend act. I’ll try to post that one once it’s recorded as well.

In addition to shooting all this stuff we are also learning about the history of television and so we were watching some old commercials and different kind of interactions between host and guests and critiquing them now that we know more about what was going on behind the scenes (such as advertisers pretty much owning the program the were sponsoring and including SUPER blatant product placement).

Anyway, definitely check out the CCAM website, I don’t know if they have recent pictures or anything but there is a lot of information there if you’re interested: http://ccam.evergreen.edu/

Hi Steven, my names Katie Beck. I’m thinking about going to Evergreen next year. I was looking in to becoming Director of Photography because I find it really interesting. So I thought you could give me your point of view and what you think about the college. Thnks :}

Hi Katie,

One of the things I like most about studying film and video here at Evergreen is that they aren’t going to teach you to go to Hollywood. None of your professors are ever going to say “Ok, you want to be a DP so you are going to join this group over here and just focus on DP things.” Instead, they are going to ignore most conventions and let you explore film and video for what it is; an art form. They are going to show you how to use the equipment and then let you go experiment with it and do what you want, not make you follow a formula. They are going to give you some tips, show you how to light things and use mics, teach you some history, and show you what other innovators have done but in the end it’s really up to you to experiment. It’s an amazing experience because, if you are still interested in being a DP when you leave Evergreen, you are going to have your own style, you’re going to know how to everything else production wise and you’re going to have an education in SO much more than just operating a camera or framing shots or even just film studies, you will also be knowledgeable about all of the other topics your interdisciplinary program explored.

One thing I tell EVERY incoming student is to try to disregard “what you want to be when you grow up” when choosing your freshman program. We don’t have pre-reqs so you can take whatever you want (for the most part) and so it’s usually very tempting to look for the thing that includes the most film studies but I really try to encourage students to use that first year or two to go outside of your box and take something completely unrelated. Still take something that sounds interesting, but take it because it involves your other interest areas (I’m sure you have some other interests, and if you don’t than this will be even more healthy for you) and not because it is going to get you a foot up for Mediaworks or something (actually, taking something else will most likely look better). Even if your program doesn’t study film, it’s still easy to integrate your interest areas into your program because instead of tests, most programs do research papers and projects so you have the opportunity to research something (could even be film related) and make a short about it. As you go further and further into your education here it becomes harder and harder to explore your interest areas so take advantage of this ability and explore as a freshman, and who knows, you might discover something new that you love doing.

Hopefully this helps,

Steven

Hey everybody, my name is Steven. I may have given you a tour when you were looking at colleges or you may have seen me this week as I sat out in that big tent in red square, but I am here for these few minutes as a fellow student. You have all been to a lot of talks and presentations and been told a lot of things about what you should expect to experience during your time here. I am not trying to down play those speeches but I think it is important to hear this from someone whose profession is not to sell this school but from someone like you who likes this place enough to pay to be here everyday. I honestly don’t think there is a better institution to be going in debt to. None of you applied to this school because of flashy credentials or a prestigious history full of presidential alumn. You have all chosen to come here because you were enticed by the unique structure. Evergreen is not just one of those schools you apply to because it’s what everyone does. You made the conscious decision to come here and do something out of the ordinary. You realized that your education should have a higher priority than a football team. You wanted a say in what and how you learned. I came here because I no longer wanted to memorize answers for tests that would “prepare” me for more tests. I was tired of learning how to get the grade. I wanted to be free to learn my way and be rewarded for doing my best. At Evergreen you will learn for the sake of learning. This was one of the hardest things for me to get used to when I first got here. This was the part that took me several quarters to fully understand. Two people in the same program could end up with 2 completely different educations. One could end up with an Ivy League education and the other could end up no further than when they started. If you do the bare minimum, if all you do is try to just get the credits, you will end up like the latter. However, if you start to really think about what you are doing, you are passionate and actually do your best, you will end up with an education unmatchable by any other institution. You will get out of Evergreen what you put into it. If you come to seminar with an open mind ready to try new things and you apply what you learn to your everyday life it will be so much more beneficial than if you just try to skim by. If you spend enough time here you will eventually end up with a degree. You decide how you get that degree. Be passionate about what you’re doing and truly learn.

Another thing that is amazing about Evergreen is that you are allowed to make mistakes. It is ok to fail. As long as you come out a better person when you recover. Last Spring I was in a program called Mediaworks. I was working on an individual project and doing a partial internship on top of trying to work 20 hours a week. Halfway through the quarter I started to freak out because I hadn’t completed as much of my internship as I had expected and parts of my individual project were not coming along as planned. While speaking to my faculty I realized that I was learning more from dealing with and recovering from things going wrong, my failures and the experience of having everything go to shit than I was from the topics of my research. This realization was not only something that I grew from personally, it would also end up in my transcript. I received an excellent evaluation because my faculty acknowledged this and saw me learning and growing.

This is the only place in the world and probably the only time in your life where you have complete freedom and control of what you do and learn, so make the best of it.

Highlights:

• Mariners won! (Or almost more importantly, the Yankees lost)
• I brought my sister to the airport for her year long exchange to Taiwan.
• Saw my brother’s new house
• Went to Manzanita (south of Seaside on the Oregon Coast) with friends and got to play in the freezing water (we try to stay in the water for as long as possible for as long as possible, fun but painful)
• Cleaned out my room so my parents can rent it out since they now have an empty nest
• Went to Corvallis to visit my girlfriend for the first time this summer and made some blackberry crisp which was soooo goooood.

I’m not quite mentally ready to be back. It’s getting close to fall so the moist weather and clouds are on the horizon. I always want hot weather when it rains and cooler weather when it’s hot. I think that’s why I love fall, nice and cool, some sun, some rain. I will definitely miss the summer though.

I got my reading list for Ready Camera One so I need to start working out which ones I’m going to buy and which I am going to get from the library.

Most of my best friends from high school were a year older than me so they are graduating at the end of this next year and have started talking about being on their own and that kind of thing. It’s a little scary. I am realizing that it is a lot closer than I realize. My mom cleaned out my room. I just got a credit card at the credit union so I can start building some credit. Even things like paying for my own health care are scary.

Speaking of health care, this whole heath care debacle is really annoying. I can’t believe people are not supporting a public health care option. It just makes me sick reading things about Palin talking about death panels and this putting “bureaucrats between you and your doctor.” Death panels? Really? You really wanna lie to me like that? And as for the bureaucrats, I would rather they be governmental bureaucrats than capitalistic-trying-to make-as-much-money-as-possible-off-of-your-sick-body bureaucrats. Bleah. I even did something I have never done before, I called our senators to show my support. That was actually really anti-climactic. I said “I want to voice my support for the public health care option” and the intern on the other side said “Ok. What’s your zip code.” I kind of though I would actually get to talk to the Senator. I guess that was a bit optimistic.

Anyway, I am definitely ranting. Send me some comments, show me some love! I like responding to people.

-Steven

I recently started going to this website called Reddit, I guess it’s a better version of Digg? I dunno, it’s way cool though. It linked me to this article: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/hell_yeah_hubble.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss

Space is crazy man. I was thinking about it and when you look at the stars and at pictures like these, it’s like looking into the past because the light has taken so long to get to our eyes, in some cases like in the video, the light has been traveling since the universe was just 500 million years old. If you think about it, there are probably galaxies and stars and stuff that are so far away that even if we had a powerful enough telescope to see that far, we wouldn’t be able to anyway because the universe hasn’t even been around long enough for the light have enough time to reach us. That’s some crazy deep stuff. They estimate that there are 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies, each composed of just as many stars and planets just like ours. I can’t even start to think about how big that is. There is so much out there that it would be impossible for there NOT to be alien life. If there was a program about space, I would totally take it.

>Fridge Cleaning<

I read my first “fun” books in a REALLY long time this past week. One of my roommates checked them out from the library and I started to read them and got hooked. The books were “Post Office” and “Factotum” by Charles Bukowski. They were super weird but really fun to read. That guy is crazy. I started reading “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer which is pretty good so far (I’m only a couple pages in).