Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
DCP Directory
MillimeterDistribution U
Jun 1, 2008 1:00 PM, By Craig Erpelding
Education institutions change courses quickly as new media outlets develop.
The Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., employs a non-traditional structure that encourages students to tell the school how they access information in the ever-amorphous world of content delivery.
Photo: Steven Heller
“Majoring in film is not your mother and father‘s major anymore.” That undeniable quote came from a conversation with David Franko, the program director of film at Winter Park, Fla.-based Full Sail University, and it is echoed by anyone involved in educating our industry's future artists.
As the landscape of content distribution spreads into new frontiers of accessibility, no one must prepare for such changes as quickly and fervently as the education institutions training the next wave of content creators.
We are all aware of how entertainment and the information highway continues to transform, but as technologies update at rates never witnessed before, so must the curricula of public and private training grounds be modified. And they are.
“Mobile content is everywhere right now, and this type of content is in such great demand that we've actually developed a class in our master's classes based entirely around mobile content creation,” Franko says.
This is a trend seen throughout the nation's film and animation schools, which has already prompted some schools to update their entire program. At the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Graduate Film School Chair Robert Peterson is already modifying the title and focus of the school's program from a graduate film degree to a graduate broadcast cinema degree.
“Today, webcasts, unicasts, podcasts, cellcasts, and platforms that have yet to be created all have a common purpose,” Peterson says. “When we wish to speak about all of the current and developing options to disseminate information or entertainment, the traditional term ‘broadcast’ symbolically represents our intent to reach and serve the broadest possible audience.
Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla., has developed a master's class based entirely around mobile content creation.
“‘Cinema’ has traditionally represented the highest level of quality in aesthetics and content. Our marriage of these two historic terms is designed to illustrate the promise of a new frontier for filmmakers.”
But that frontier, as new as it might be for some professionals in the industry, is already embraced by this new age of content creators — to the point that incoming freshmen even drive some of the syllabus objectives and coursework.
“We have a portfolio review before students are even accepted into our program, and I've got 17-year-olds telling us we can watch their demo reels on YouTube or they'll come in on an interview and they'll show it to me on their [Sony] PSP,” says Jason Donati, chair of media arts and animation at the New England Institute of Art. “So they get it. They come in knowing the importance of distribution intuitively.”
This type of student-driven class assignment focus is exactly what Peterson has in mind for the Art Center in Pasadena. He says the school actually wants its students to teach them not only how the younger generation sees the world but also how they access information in order to decipher what type of content is important for them to teach. This type of non-traditional structure could be exactly what students want and need to flourish in the ever-amorphous arena of content delivery.
