This has been a busy year in the Learning Studio. Since opening in 2011, we’ve offered workshops to 287 teachers from ACU and other schools and universities. Our records show that 17,278 total reservations were made to the 10 collaboration rooms in the new facility. And we’ve offered hundreds of tours to thousands of visitors interested in the design of the space and our programs.
As we wrapped up the spring semester, staff in the Learning Studio began work on our Year One Report, an interactive overview of our first year of operation. The report tells the story of many of the students and faculty we’ve worked with in Year One with examples of projects and testimonials from the participants.
As the summer winds down, we hope you’ll take a few minutes to hear a few of the stories and achievements of our students and faculty this first year.
(Note: To view embedded video and interactive content, make sure to download the iBook Version. Apple iBooks require an iPad running the iBooks 2 app and are not currently viewable on a Mac, PC or smartphone.)
Highlights
The 35-page report includes interviews and projects from 35 faculty and students
Our 8,800 square foot facility is presented from early design sketches to a full virtual tour
7 content galleries and 14 movies—including the Year One feature video—introduce major projects
A “by the numbers” section summarizes facility usage, workshops participation and equipment checkout
About the Report
Learning Studio staff produced the Year One Report using iBooks Author for display on iPad, in part to better understand the software and assess its potential in producing next-generation learning content.
On September 19th, we’ll be presenting on the process in an NMC Connect webinar hosted by the New Media Consortium. We’ll post more details when we have them to Twitter and Facebook.
Last fall, Lawson Soward and Caitlin Bradford submitted their first film to the Sundance Film Festival. It started with a conversation in January 2011 about a story idea Caitlin had been chewing on. The two of them began artistic design for the production in our screening room during the student grand opening in February. Lawson was the first in line in March when Canon made DSLR cameras available for checkout to student filmmakers. And the two of them spent Spring Break editing in the media lab where Adobe After Effects made the final montage possible.
Since 2004, students have produced 100 films for ACU’s FilmFest, a student short-film competition. The contest began as an iMovie contest with Apple providing access to iMacs and digital camcorders. By 2011, most entries were edited on Apple’s FinalCut Pro, so the move to DSLR cameras shooting HD video was a natural next step. Paul McAniff from Canon joined us for a pro video workshop the week before FilmFest officially kicked off, making Canon 5D bodies and pro-series lenses available for checkout through the Learning Studio.
The result of this unprecedented access and opportunity is a film like “Hazel & Jack.” At the FilmFest premiere downtown at the historic Paramount theatre, Lawson and Caitlin went home with 10 awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writer. The film wowed industry judges at the symposium the next day, where Randy Brewer, executive producer at Revolution Pictures in Nashville, Tenn., was the first to encourage them to submit their film to other festivals like SXSW and Sundance. “FilmFest was exciting to be a part of this year due to the beautiful photography in a lot of the pieces,” said Brewer. “I use the Canon 5D in music videos I shoot with major artists and the increased image quality really showed in the student films.”
As the semester winds down, we always enjoy seeing the students and faculty coming through our doors in the final days. In addition to a growing number of students producing digital storytelling projects, we’ve been happy to see groups using the collaborative spaces in new ways.
A couple weeks ago Mike Wiggins brought his ART 457: Interactive Design class over for their final project. Students broke into groups to propose mobile app ideas, develop basic functionality, consider user personas, and produce wireframes and then final screen designs of their proposed app.
Check the class blog to see student reflections and screen mock-ups.
Mike sent us an update this week, including a link to the final project critique. Two alums of the department of Art & Design, now working for MEplusU in Dallas (formerly IMC2), joined the class in a Google Hangout to hear student pitches and provide feedback of their work.
For the second year, Dr. Cole Bennett’s ENGL 325: Advanced Comp students premiered their Literacies projects in the screening room.
The course introduces students to “theories of literacy from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, paying particular attention to readings that emphasize social and political issues related to reading and writing.” then concluded with student-produced videos introducing a cultural literacy of their own:
“Rhetorically, this video should attempt to convince the viewer that 1) the activity under consideration qualifies as an expanded form of literacy; and 2) society would benefit as a whole if such argument were accepted. How does the subject fall under a definition of literacy? Which definition? Why does it matter? How are our lives enriched if we agree with you? How might your opponents disagree with you, and how would you address such concerns?”
In our first year, we’ve had opportunities to work with some extraordinary faculty at ACU. Nil Santana teaches a range of photography and graphic design courses in the department of Art & Design and has led several of our faculty workshops as well.
This week Nil sent us a video he’s been working on that we knew others would want to know more about. From the tradition of the short-subject documentary, Nil’s visuals capture the time-honored process of binding as the interview with Stan Chapman reflects on the future of an industry.
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About the Film
This is a project Nil will be giving students in an Advanced Photography class next fall, so he wanted to produce a sample film himself to help them understand the process.
The video was shot on a Canon 5D mkii with all pans and movement captured as video using a tripod. The only significant change he made to the video in post was bringing it into black and white.
One rule of thumb for students new to DSLR filmmaking is to try to keep the shutter speed as close to 2x the frame-rate as possible. Nil shot everything at 1/60 of a second and 30 frames per second (fps), making adjustments as needed to either ISO or f-stop to maintain that shutter speed.
Most of the wide shots were shot with a kit lens he had (28-135mm) but the striking close-ups of machinery used a fast 85mm that gave him the narrow depth of field.
Finally, all audio was captured in the camera with one of our check-out video mics, though he’s still looking for a better solution when recording on-site.
All editing was done in either FinalCut Pro or Soundtrack Pro.
For more information on DSLR filmmaking or check-out equipment for an upcoming project, drop by the Learning Studio.
This has been a busy year in the Learning Studio. Since opening in 2011, we’ve offered workshops to 287 teachers from ACU and other schools and universities. Our records show that 17,278 total reservations were made to the 10 collaboration rooms in the new facility. And we’ve offered hundreds of tours to thousands of visitors interested in the design of the space and our programs.
