CCA Confidential

Over the past couple of 4D classes, we have been working on learning audio production techniques in Garage Band. And so far it hasn’t been that exciting. Mostly we sit in the computer lab messing around on audio files, with no real direction.

That changed yesterday when Bayete (our professor) invited his friend Brett Myers to talk about his career, how he got there, and his work with National Public Radio.

Brett started out as a photographer studying at NYU. He thought he would be a photographer for ever, but he soon after college discovered he didn’t like linear quality of the current photographic style. He wanted to tell stories. And no one makes photo essays anymore, according to Brett. So he moved on to Radio.

He has worked on a number of high profile independent pieces for NPR. Here is a link to his most famous peice, A Woman’s Metamorphosis into the ‘Butterfly Lady‘, and I would embed it here, if I could.

Now he works for Youth Radio. A very cool organization that teaches underprivileged young people how to make audio beat tracks, but at the same time, teaches them to write and express opinions. This nonprofit works with NPR, playing works by many of the young artists.

After working with several different groups, Brett has become a master of the interview. And he shared with us seven tips and some good advice for turning an interview into a story.

1. The interview is not about you. Don’t interrupt their story with your own experience, just let them talk.
2. Honestly pay attention. The other person will notice even the slightest waver in your interest.
3. Be Humble. See point one and two.
4. Do research. You should find out as much as you can before talking to the person.
5. Be ready to be surprised. Don’t just ask question you know the answers to, find out something new.
6. Follow up. People don’t tell full stories, when they stop, you need to ask pointed questions to dig further.
7. Respect them. Even if you don’t agree with what they are saying, you must respect them.

Once you have the interview, transforming it into a story takes an insane amount of editing. Every breath, every pause, every word in an interview you hear on the radio has been edited in some way. People don’t tell stories in a linear fashion, they jump around, pause, stop, and start again later.

Brett advice to us was, create a beginning, middle, and end. This must be somewhat fabricated by the editor because they don’t really exist in open ended interview. And edit, edit, edit, until all the fat of the story is gone.

I talked with several of my classmates after the lecture, and we all seemed very effected by his presentation. I don’t really know how to describe it. Maybe somehow invigorated, or maybe inspired.

I’ve created a flickr account to share all my work and photos.

Check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccaconfidential/

There isn’t much there now, just some photos of the Oakland Campus, but I promise to keep add more photos over the next couple of weeks.

I just noticed this morning that the CCA has put up the Spring 2008 schedule on their website. As a graphic design major entering my sophomore year I know I need to take:

• Graphic Design I
• Typography I
• Tools I
• History of Visual Communication

As mentioned in my previous post you can’t register for classes online. Oddly the CCA doesn’t publish a paper version of their classes schedule. So what do you do? It is my understanding that every student meets with a councilor who assess their progress and assists them in signing up for classes. I don’t know for sure, because, well, this is my first semester, if you haven’t been following along.

I need to get working, because one of my major goals for this term is to challenge my Tools I class. But more on this later.

Each week in my Introduction to the Art our professor assigns us a question we must research. Today we must answer, “Who is Hatshepsut?”

It turns out the acient Egyptions were slightly more progressive than our current government. Hatshepsut is widely considered to be the most successful woman pharaoh to rule over Egypt. See Wikipedia>>

I am not sure how feel about this class. So far I can’t really criticize it for anything particular, accept that I wish we spent more time looking at art and less time talking about politics and geography. It is still early in the term, so I will hold off on complete dissection.

Finally my new school jitters are gone, and I am feeling comfortable with the campus, buildings, and administration. The campus is relatively small in size, with just over a dozen or so buildings and few off campus,. There isn’t much to learn. This may sound weird, but what surprised me was the lack of bathrooms. Currently I know of only three. There most be more somewhere, but everyone just uses the bathrooms next to the coffee house.

As for the buildings, I have to say they are nice. I have taken classes at four or five different universities, and the CCA buildings manage to balanced usability and free form experimentation. Each room has just what it needs for the type of work done in it, and nothing more. So there is often enough space to do large projects or change the format of a class. All the equipement works well, and if it doesn’t they have a tech out within 5-10 minutes with a new one.

It took me a little bit to get uses to the CCA administration. It’s very different from other universities. Everything is done on paper, not online, and for best results, in person. Not knowing this, I kept calling, asking questions, being redirected, sending emails; all of it took longer than simply going into the office and asking. Must universities discourage this either through evil receptionist who won’t/can’t help you, or by simply putting everything online. But the CCA staff is very nice, and I have had all loan and applications issues solved without too much hassle.

Now that I have figured out some of the basics I am feeling more at home on the Oakland campus, but I know I will have to learn it all over again next semester when I move the the San Francisco Campus.

This is the second part of the 40 rectangles project. My plan was to record my work in single frame animation much like the first part of the project. But when I assembled the video I realized the objects weren’t big enough on screen. So I sucked it up, and created a second video. Now you can see all the detail, or lack there of.

These are my finished rectilinear objects for the second part of my first project in 3D Visual Dynamics.

You can read about the assignment, its goals and guidelines here: http://www.ccaconfidential.com/2007/09/11/my-first-project/

Last night I started my project for 3D visual dynamics. The first step, create 40 clay rectangles. I setup my camera on a tripod and shot photos every couple of minutes, and animated them into a stop motion 20 second film. Total, I think I sent about 3.5 hours making the blocks.

It turns out the most effect way to make the rectangles was to start with a medium sized block of clay pressed roughly into a oval. I used my fingers to level off the top. After leveling it, I would use the thin metal sculpting tool to cut out a rectangle much like a cookie cuter.