Beyond Pix Studios

Last Thursday, February 10th, the DSA juniors had their career exploration fieldtrips! Our class got split up into 3 different places and I just happened to go to Beyond Pix Studios located in the lovely city of San Francisco. We took a rather short BART ride to the Embarcadero station and headed off the rest of the way on foot. We finally found our destination, and we were first greeted by their glass doors with the colorful Beyond Pix Studios logo elegantly imprinted on it. We were then greeted by two of their staff members named Laura Hart and Sean Karlin. Laura is the production coordinator and Sean is the director of photography. We happened to catch them at a time where they had clients working in one of their studios, so we got to see the green screen, the lights, the teleprompter, and the cameras all set up and ready for the shoot that was about to take place in that magical little room. After that, Laura and Sean took us up to the next floor and showed us their control room where they do broadcasts and live shootings. This was the most interesting part of the fieldtrip for me. Seeing all the little monitors, the cameras, the knobs, the colorfully lit buttons that were everywhere would definately catch anyone ones attention. In that room we met another guy and he talked more about what they did in that room and how they broadcast and record people right there and send it immediately out to the news for everyone to see. I also thought it was very interesting that the background that you see when most people get interviewed on the news is just a big screen tv with a moving picture on it.

After this we explored some more of the buliding. We even watched some creative and funny videos that Beyond Pix had actually made for some of their clients. We also got the opportunity to split up in to littler groups and talk to a senior editor, junior editor, and the post-production coordinator. It was nice hearing and seeing a little of what each of them do in their job. One take away I rememebr was when the post-production coordinator said, “If you are an editor you have to be a 51% listener and a 41% editor.” I thought that was interesting, and I definately agree. It is all about listening to what your client wants and producing your utmost impressive work in order to please them.

Overall, I thought this trip was good. I’m not sure if it was any more or less helpful or interesting than last years fieldtrip to KQED, but I still had a good experience. It was nice hearing the staff share their wise words and experiences with us because it really helps me to figure out if I really am interested in going into this type of career in the future. I had fun and I hope that we get to have even more fieldtrips like these, maybe next time where they do some media for sports and sporting events! Haaa. (=

I am thankful for:

Day #3

I know it says day #3 but this is actually my first “thankful” post. Uhhh ohhh.. Anyway, I am thankful for Loris Lorona! She is the music director for the DSA and she’s helping me with my IDentity song right now. She is such a talented person, and her voice is amazing. Without her, my song would be nothing. She is always positive, and I just love her overall attitude. Her and I work good together and I am so excited to finish my song with her. I am very thankful to have her here, helping me with my song. She is also helping many other students, and I am thankful that she makes time for me to work on my song. Yay!

SILENT MOVIE

 

 

This is the silent movie that Nina, Dezsiree, Alfonzo, and I made. We just came up with a generic name like DAY&NIGHT, just for the heck of it, but you can call it whatever you’d like. At first our idea was to show different subjects during the day, and show those same exact subject at night. However, this video just turned out to be the day going into night. We just shot random thing that we thought were pretty. We took a lot more videos that we didn’t even incorporate in our video.

I composed the song that is playing in the background on garage band. I was proud of the song, and I thought it sounded great on garage band with the big headphone on. However, when I heard it on my regular laptop speakers it sounded totally different. The song had a more creepy tone to it than a peaceful, mystical type tone I was going for. I probably should have tested it out on regular speakers before I exported it and uploaded it on Vimeo.

Well, yeah. This is our silent video. It wasn’t really what I was envisioning, but it turned out really nice, nonetheless.

Who WE Are

photoessay

 

This is who we are! Well, how I interpret it anyway. All of the pictures I used on my photoessay, I took, except the first picture with all the girls. The tripod took that one. I guess the message I wanted to get across from my photoessay was that we are all in this together. We are an academy who likes to act silly, but serious when needed, who likes to take pictures to capture the memories that we have together. I also used Nina’s picture of her shadow, cause I edited and took it, and I was really proud of how it turned out! Yes, so, this is who we are, and this is my photoessay. Enjoy.

Internshipppp!

The Legacy of Imperialism

Wow… I’m doing a post about this project now! Do you know what that means?! It means that school is almost over! It’s mind boggling how time goes by so fast. It seems like just yesterday that I did a post about my first semester in the DSA, and now, school is coming to an end, and I am doing a post about this crazy, challenging, overwhelming project!

Anyway, I was grouped up with 3 stubborn, sometimes lazy, but amazingly wonderful guys, Jaime, Tyler, and Rodolfo. Together, we were representing the country of Sierra Leone. We decided to focus our attention on infants and mothers. We wanted to help them through education and service by having seminars and hands on training classes teaching women health techniques. Man oh man, this whole project was extremely difficult. All the writing, the designing, the picture placing, the sleepless nights. Sometimes everything was just so overwhelming, but I somehow managed to pull through. As for the 3 boys in my group, they did work whenever I asked them to, and they did help me at times. Even though this project would stress me out beyond belief, I can honestly say that this whole experience was enjoyable. From anything to having fights with my group, staying after school each day, having endless ideas that somehow never seemed to work, all these experiences made me a better student, a better thinker.

When the day came to present, my group and I were so nervous! Everyone has such good ideas and designs, and that day was the day to put everything out on the table and have the judges love it! My group was the third group to present, and I believe we did great! Jaime, Tyler, and Rodolfo did a wonderful job speaking and they made me so proud! I guess the judges thought we did a good job too, because we got funded! Woo! Even though all the groups couldn’t get funded, I thought everyone was amazing! The quality of work that we all produced was absolutely beautiful. I am so proud of the DSA class of ’12, and I congratulate everyone for doing such a good job on this project, funded or not! <3

Sierra Leone Country Poster

This is the country poster I created for Sierra Leone. I don’t think it is the best I could have done, but I was really stressed and busy with finishing the country plan, so this is just what I came up with. I was inspired by cartoonish traveling posters, so I decided to do a cartoonish country poster. I started off with this picture of a beach in Sierra Leone. Then I posterized it, and cloned some of the sky and also cloned and messed with the sea in the back, so it could look more like water. Then I added text and waaahhhhlaaaaahh! You’ve got a country poster!

Career Exploration Visit

I thought my visit to KQED was great. I never got to experience visiting a television station before, so I was quite excited. Before the visit to KQED, I thought that I was going to see a very busy environment, full of hustle and bustle. I thought I was going to see people scattering about, lights, camera, and of course, action. However, that’s not how things were like at all, at least for that day. Instead, I saw a very quiet, low pressure type of environment. It almost felt like I was in my mom’s office job. On the contrary, my mom’s office job doesn’t have all the cool technology and electronics that I saw at KQED.

My classmates and I were even lucky enough to go inside their two TV studios where they occasionally shoot some of the shows that they broadcast. While in there, our tour guide talked to us about suspension of disbelief.  It is when you are so captivated by a show, movie, or book, that you seem to forget that it is not real. I thought this topic was very interesting, because I do notice myself go into another world when I watch my favorite show.

My group and I also had the chance to hear and speak to some of the employees at KQED. One person who really intrigued me was, Jean. She works as a floor manager, making sure that all the equipment and the talents are good and ready to be shot. She also mentioned that when she is not working for KQED, she is the floor manager for sporting events, such as, basketball games and baseball games. When she said this, my eyes lit up like a six-year old on Christmas morning! I never knew that such a job like that was possible. Right then and there, my eyes were opened up to the sports media field, and now I’m really interested in working in sports media.

Overall, my experience at KQED was wonderful. I got to see all their expensive equipment and even had the chance to see where they shoot some of their shows. I learned about suspension of disbelief, which I now always think about when I watch TV. Most importantly, I just got to experience a whole new field of work that I have never really been informed about. This fieldtrip made a rather significant impact on me. Hopefully one day I could be a floor manager for sporting events just like Jean.

UC Berkeley Reflective Essay

My visit to UC Berkeley was quite interesting. I have had a tour of the campus before on a previous field-trip. However, now that I am older and want to have an idea of what college has to offer me, this time around seemed much more significant. My preconceived thoughts about this college visit did not match what we really did. I was expecting to see what a lecture hall actually looked like, and how the classrooms were set up. I was also expecting to have the trip be more interactive instead of just standing around hearing a person talk about the buildings. In addition, I was hoping that we could have been able to talk more about the specific majors that you can study at UC Berkeley.

On the contrary, I did retain a good amount of information from our tour guide. For instance, I found out that only 20-25% of students are accepted into UC Berkeley and that you need to take an entrance exam, plus, two personal essays in order to get in. He also talked about student housing and dormitories and how one floor shares a bathroom, a common living space, and a kitchen. Our tour guide also mentioned that classes can have up to 800 students! That’s a pretty big difference from having about 30 students in each of my classes right now.

For the most part, everything that I learned or discovered on this visit was not too surprising. I already had an idea of what Berkeley was like and I already knew how diverse and beautiful the campus was. Although I seemed to know what to expect, it was still a great pleasure to walk around and hear the histories of the buildings and stories about the school. I learned plenty of information, and by visiting UC Berkeley, and seeing all those college students, really makes me excited to go to college.

Histories of our Families.

This is the video i created to honor my family and what they had to over come just to be the strong family we are today. In the beginning of this project it was quite a challenge choosing what i wanted my story to be about. Once i finally chose what to write about, it was a whole other challenge to try to find pictures to go along with my story. I really loved recording my story in the studio. It was so much fun. Finalcut was also fun to work with. It was easy and pretty self explanatory, nothing complicated. I’m extremely proud that i finished this project and now my family and i have a video we can watch to remind us of all the struggles we had, and to remind us that we are family, no matter what.