Archive for July, 2010

Former Film Students Attempt to Shoot Feature Film in 24 Hours

July 30th, 2010

In the tradition of movies whose stories have taken place over the course of a day such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Do The Right Thing”, and “Training Day”, “The Deadlines” takes place in one house over the span of a single night.

The most interesting thing about this particular production is that Florida native Blake Hooks, and his co-director, Jason Sanders plan to shoot the entire film in 24 hours!

“The main reason we decided to attempt the 24-hour thing is because most of us have been on sets where you sit around more than you shoot,” Hooks said. “It becomes aggravating and you become less motivated on the project when you spend an entire day shooting one scene. So we started thinking there had to be a way to do ‘guerrilla’ film making with quality.”

Hooks said his life was changed by a TV production class he took at George Jenkins High School. In 2003, Hooks moved to California after attending college in Tallahassee and studied film production at Los Angeles City College.

Shooting on the 90-minute horror movie “The Deadlines” will both open and wrap on Aug. 8. Filming will take place in in Bakersfield, California.

Visit FilmSchools.com for more on the top film schools and degree programs in film and television.

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Posted in Art, Careers, Film

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University of Phoenix passes Best Places to Work test

July 29th, 2010

Just graduated from the University of Phoenix? Or somewhere with a slightly smaller student body? (Phoenix boasts more than 400,000 alum) If you’re looking for that first job out of school, and you’re in the Cleveland area,  consider some of the Best Places to Work in Cleveland — such as the University of Phoenix, which made the cut in the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s survey of employees. We don’t know if they’re hiring, but… it can’t hurt to apply.

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Posted in Careers, For-Profit Education, Online Education

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The Art of the Oil Spill

July 22nd, 2010

In an effort to keep the  the impact of the BP oil spill fresh in the public mind, (and to protest offshore drilling or just process the environmental damage to the Gulf Coast), artists have created paintings, sculptures, and logos to express their outrage, reports the Art Institutes blog, InSite.

“Artists and designers are very passionate people,” says Art Institutes graphic design instructor Beth Remsburg . “When something motivates us to act, we do. There are certain events that tug at our souls; our very being.”

Some artists have expressed their outrage in 2 contests (sponsored by Greenpeace and LogoMyWay) to create   new logos for BP that they feel more correctly expose the company’s lack of care for the environment.

The Jonathan Ferrara gallery is showing an online  fundraising exhibition, Gulf Aid Art, showcasing works done by Louisiana artists in response to the oil spill.  Monies raised will assist artists affected by the disaster.

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Posted in Art, Graphic Design

Explore the Red Planet Online!

July 13th, 2010

Explore Mars Online

Thanks to NASA, students and amateur scientists can now explore the Red Planet online using software released today by Microsoft Research.

Though many of the images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are already available on the space agency’s Web site, Microsoft has now loaded them into its WorldWide Telescope interface, which creates a way for users to easily pan around the images to see them in context, and presents them in higher resolution than previously available online.

“You can actually see rover tracks on the Martian surface,” said Dan Fay, director of earth, energy, and environment for Microsoft Research, in an interview.

The WorldWide Telescope software is free but only runs on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. A Web interface of the system is available, but the Mars images are not yet available there.

Meanwhile, some professors and schoolteachers use the Web telescope in their classrooms, and anyone online is encouraged to scour the images to find unique features of Mars that professional researchers might have missed.

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Posted in Science, Technology

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Laid Off? An Internship May Be Just What You Need!

July 12th, 2010

Internships

Out of gainful employment, out of job offers and running out of savings, Scott Stevens of Portland, Oregon, has turned to a familiar strategy to gain experience and keep his skills fresh: The internship.

In spring 2009, Stevens, 35, took an internship on a sustainable tourism project for Travel Portland, a nonprofit destination marketing organization. In this role, he researches what it would take for an entire city to become sustainable and how best to market this initiative to the public.

His salary: Zero. Instead, the former IT sales and marketing professional is doing the internship for the experience.

“I liked the idea of an internship as a way to keep busy and connected,” he says. “The value to me is in learning something new.”

With the economy in the doldrums, Stevens isn’t the only experienced worker to go the internship route. Some, like Stevens, are using internships to build their resumes and gain experience during a period of unemployment. Others are looking to enhance their professional knowledge or sample a new field ahead of a possible career change.

Test-Driving a New Career

Another reason to embrace an internship as a grown-up is to lay a foundation for a future career change. Such is the case with Lisa Tresmontan.

In early 2009, Tresmontan, 31, agreed to take a low-paying internship with Joshua Charles Catering in San Mateo, California. In this position, she works nights and weekends helping CEO Josh Feinbloom with everything from food preparation to event planning. In early 2009, Tresmontan oversaw every aspect of a customer’s wedding reception; in June, she helped cater an entire weekend of festivities.

Tresmontan landed the internship through friends of friends in the catering industry. It helped that her mother works in the business as well.

While Tresmontan admits that moonlighting is a lot of work on top of her full-time job as associate sourcing manager for Pottery Barn, she said she wasn’t ready to take a leap into the catering business without exploring it first.

“I wanted to make sure I liked it, and I’ve actually liked it more than I thought I would,” she says. “Someday, when I’m ready, I can leave the corporate world behind me and commit full time to this new career.”

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Posted in Careers

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Sen. Durbin speaks out against for-profit schools

July 2nd, 2010
Senator Dick Durbin at the National Press Club

Senator Dick Durbin at the National Press Club

According to this Chicago Tribune article, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is speaking out against for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Illinois-based DeVry University.

In recent remarks at the National Press Club, the Senator says that these schools burden students with debt, make money essentially from the Federal government’s loans, and don’t help students get good-paying jobs.

He gives the following example:  a woman who received her bachelor’s and masters degrees online — “without ever having to step foot in a classroom” –  is now carrying $110,000 in debt, but can’t repay it because she is working for a nonprofit that helps poor children.

The Senator called the online degrees “worthless” and said tighter regulation of for-profit schools is needed. As the article says, he “did not single out any one bad practice” from the schools, but is instead opposed, it would seem, to their reliance on loans from the Federal government.

The article does not comment on how the woman found her job or what it entails.

Many for-profit  schools do make money based on student loans funded by the government. Of course, many students can also attend private nonprofit schools only because of help from the government. And because public schools are by definition public, they too are funded to a large degree by the government (state and Federal). The question comes down to one of purpose.

Is the purpose of the for-profit schools to make education accessible to people who would normally not receive it, and then to reinvest profits into new technologies and faculty? Or, as the Senator says, are they forgetting their purpose and instead thinking only of profit?

A few other questions that the Senator’s remarks bring to mind: is regulating for-profit schools the answer to the problem of debt? Are for-profit schools the only schools to give out “worthless” degrees? How does one really define “worthiness” in the first place?

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Posted in For-Profit Education, Online Education

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