Student Film Critiques with Brent McCorkle

Mar 19, 2018 | FilmFest, News & Events

Brent McCorkle is an award-winning screenwriter, filmmaker and musician, best known for his work on the films Unconditional, Woodlawn and the just-released I Can Only Imagine. Earlier this month, Brent touched down in Abilene and set up shop in the Learning Studio for two days of film editing critiques with ACU students participating in this year’s FilmFest competition.

During the sessions, Brent looked at late-stage edits of each film, giving each team notes on pacing and construction. The face-to-face meetings helped student filmmakers plan a roadmap for success and get a taste of the kind of critical review they’ll face when Brent returns as a FilmFest judge for the April 6 black-tie gala at the Historic Paramount Theatre.

Learn more about ACU FilmFest »

ACU at home in Germany

Oct 25, 2017 | News & Events

This week ACU opens a new home base for students studying in Leipzig, Germany. You’ll hear more about the exciting history and location of this property in the future, but we wanted to give you a first look. The following 360 photos and video were taken during a digital storytelling workshop with Study Abroad students last spring, so the facility has already changed a lot but this will give you a virtual visit to the new ACU villa.

Germany is an exciting place to study right now, with dynamic modern cities like Berlin and Leipzig, and historical centers like the city of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther published his 95 Theses 500 years ago this month. The ACU in Germany 360 video gave us a chance to explore a little more of what immersive experiences can do.

The videos are best viewed in a Chrome browser or using the Vimeo app on a smartphone or tablet. All video was shot on a Nikon Keymission 360 4K camera that uses two fish-eye lenses pointing opposite directions and then stitches the two together. Come see us in the Learning Studio if you’re interested in shooting some 360 video of your own!

 

 

Introducing: Media Suites

Sep 15, 2017 | News & Events

It’s never been easier to start your next media project in the Learning Studio. This semester we’re introducing our brand new Media Suites—three reservable spaces focused on media creation, from filming and editing video to recording and editing audio.

Two of these rooms are located in our former Studio rooms. Studio 1 becomes Media 2: home to our redesigned One Button Studio, with upgrades to lighting, video quality, and with added curtain options. And Studio 2 is now Media 3: a professional audio suite with an upgraded digital interface and two studio mics connected to a 27-inch iMac. Whether you’re recording a quick video or launching a new podcast, these updated spaces are the place to start.

And first but not least is Media 1, a brand new space set to open later this year. Media 1 is geared toward student filmmakers, with a production-grade Mac to handle video up to 4K, along with a large flat-screen TV for playing back your creations at-scale.

The Learning Studio has always been a campus home for creators at ACU, and we can’t wait to see how you maximize our new Media Suites to make and share messages that matter.

Reserve a Media Suite, or any of our other group rooms, for up to two hours at a time up to a week in advance, at acu.edu/ls.

Golden Light Workshop

Apr 21, 2017 | News & Events, Workshops

In April, Asia Eidson worked with a group of student photographers interested in mastering golden light.

Friday afternoon, she walked them through working with subjects for couples’ portraits and then that evening took them on a shoot with models to experience the challenge of getting informal pictures as the light disappears at the end of the day.

Saturday after she took a second group through a typical early-morning shoot, Asia introduced students to strategies for editing portraits in Adobe Lightroom. As Adobe Creative Cloud continues to be available to the campus for free, we see a growing number of students tapping the power of tools like Lightroom.

If you’d like to hear about future student workshops, email us at learningstudio@acu.edu to get on our mailing list.

Web Portfolio
http://www.photobyjoy.com

Image Credits:  Alex Gabriele, Brittney Johnson

On Design: Our New Video Series

Feb 1, 2017 | Featured Video, News & Events

Jeff Rogers

Jeff Rogers is a Brooklyn-based designer and ACU grad, known for his hand-lettered graphic design work for a long list of clients that includes Diet Coke, Fast Company, McDonald’s and the New York Times. Jeff recently visited ACU to leave his typographic mark on the new student lounge in the Department of Art and Design, and he was generous enough to let us capture his creative process and interview him while he worked. While Jeff is the first to admit he’s not done learning, he had plenty of rich lessons on tap for us from a storied design career. Take a look, in our second installation of the On Design series, our storytelling collaboration with the ACU Department of Art and Design.

Randy Hunt is vice president for design at Etsy Inc., a global online creative marketplace with offices around the world. On a recent trip to Abilene, Randy sat down with us to discuss his design philosophy, as well as the value of training designers in a liberal arts environment like ACU. In a workshop with students in the ACU Art and Design department, he challenged them to use found objects to design a series of posters on creativity. Our cameras were rolling for our first episode of the On Design series, our storytelling collaboration with the ACU Department of Art and Design.