Digital Media Summer Institute 2008

1 May 2008

The Summer Institute's activities will be taught by renowned UT Austin Professors and aims to increase the possibilities offered by the New Media.

Overview:
The Summer Institute 2008 is a unique event organized by the UT Austin|Portugal Program comprising workshops and talks that cover several areas of the Digital Media Program such as Cinema (fiction and documentary), Design, Music and Journalism.   The Summer Institute's activities will be taught by renowned UT Austin Professors and aims to increase the possibilities offered by the New Media.

Program:
Summer Institute 2008 Opening Session June 2nd/ 6:00 pm FCSH/Auditrio 1
Workshops (by application only) - All workshops are free of charge
Collaborative Scriptwriting Workshop “ Richard Lewis “ May 26th to June 6th/ 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm at FCSH
Digital Documentary Workshop “ Karen Kocher “ June 2nd to June 13th/ 9:00 am to 12:00 pm at FCSH
Digital Hollywood Workshop “ Bryan Sebok June 9th to June 13th/ 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm - at FCSH
Online Journalism Workshop “ Rosental Alves " June 16th to June 26th/ 9:00 am to 1:00 pm at FCSH
Creating Music and Audio for Film, Video and Games Workshop “ Bruce Pennycook June 16th to June 27th/ 3:00 pm to 8:00pm (lecture + lab work) - at FCSH
Photorealistic 3D Graphics Rendering & Simulation Workshop “ Arie Stavchansky “ June 16th to June 27th/ 9:00 am to 6:00 pm “ at FCT
Public Talks

Innovation and Technology in Film “ Tom Schatz “ May 30th/ 9:30pm Cinemateca Portuguesa (Tickets purchased at Cinemateca)
Digital Film “ Tom Schatz “ June 6th/6:00pm “ FCSH/Auditrio 1
Youth and New Media “ Craig Watkins “ June 17th/6:00pm FCSH/ Auditrio 1
Remapping the Digital Divide “ Sharon Strover “ June 20th/6:00pm “ FCSH/Auditrio 1
Love & Death in 3 Minutes or Less: the Screenwriter's role in New Media - Stuart Kelban - June 24th/6:00pm - FCSH/Auditório 1Â
Innovation and Technology in Film Series (At Cinemateca Portuguesa)
May 29th The Matrix
May 30th King Kong (1933)
June 2nd Citizen Kane
June 3rd Rope
June 4th Singing in the Rain
June 5th Bad Day at Black Rock
June 6th 2001, a Space Odyssey
How to apply for the Workshops:
Applications are closed. Selected Applicants were notified on May 15th.

Additional Information

Workshop Descriptions:

Collaborative Scriptwriting Workshop:
A practical introduction to the collaborative method in scriptwriting. Over the course of the two weeks, the class will treat its members as a writing staff and, collectively, they will outline and work on writing the first act of multiple projects. Students will brainstorm the ideas together, and writers will be assigned particular scenes or acts to write.

Digital Documentary Workshop:
In this short course students propose, produce and edit short videos documenting the City of Lisbon. The unifying theme for these short documentaries will be "hidden Lisbon”. In the process of the workshop participants will explore how film language, namely visuals, audio and editing, can be employed to achieve a desired effect.

Digital Hollywood Workshop:
The "Digital Hollywood" workshop will present a macro-industrial perspective on the incorporation, innovation, and diffusion of digital technologies into the filmed entertainment industries' production, distribution, and exhibition businesses’. This workshop will assess the significance of digital technologies in terms of shifting business practices, revenue streams, digital aesthetics, and the increasing relevance of online markets.

Online Journalism Workshop:
Through practical assignments, analysis of successful cases and specialized literature, this workshop will examine the transformations journalism currently faces in order to meet the Digital Revolution, particularly in what concerns the search for a multimedia language.

Creating Music and Audio for Film, Video and Games Workshop:
This course will explore current technologies and techniques for the creation of music, audio and sound effects for film, video and games. It will be based primarily on the widely used Apple Logic Studio 8. Students will need to be comfortable with the Mac OS-X platform. However, no prior knowledge of Logic is required. The course will cover basic musical forms, looping and mixing, soft instrument plugins, synchronizing musical materials to video, acquiring and modifying audio effects files, advanced sound treatment using Logic plugins, game audio design, track layering, and surround mixing. Students will complete five short assignments and one longer project using video clips provided for the class or materials the students may have.
The production facilities will include a suite of Intel iMac computers with Garage Band 4 and Logic Studio 8. Students will need to bring their own stereo headphones (1/8 stereo) for these workstations. The final project will be mixed on the teaching station using 5.1 surround audio.
Photorealistic 3D Graphics Rendering & Simulation Workshop
Photorealistic rendering assists problem solving in scientific, economic, instructional, entertainment, and artistic disciplines. This course surveys the uses of photorealistic 3D computer graphics which range from advertising campaigns to the modeling molecular structures, and delves into the process for creating such imagery. Students are introduced to 3DStudioMax and Mental Ray applications, but will be taught so they can approach any type of 3D application.

Faculty bios:

Richard Lewis
Director, and/or writer for companies including National Geographic Television, Channel 4 (UK), A&E, PBS, Sierra Club Productions, and Devillier-Donegan Enterprises. Most recently, he worked on The Living Weapon, an episode of American Experience for PBS. His last production, Chimp Rescue, premiered on National Geographic Explorer and won a Genesis Award for Best Cable Documentary.
Richard’s editing credits include Nick Broomfield’s Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of A Serial Killer. Additional experience includes three years as a story analyst in Los Angeles and three years as a management consultant with Andersen Consulting in Atlanta and London.
Richard primarily teaches producing and screenwriting.

Karen Kocher
Six years ago, inspired by the phenomenal archival collection at the Austin History Center, Karen began research for Austin Past and Present, a multimedia history of the City of Austin for use in public kiosks, schools and libraries.
Using the power of interactive technology and a video-rich approach, Kocher and her talented team, working with many local experts from the fields of history, architecture, geology, archeology and paleontology, have produced a comprehensive multimedia journey that illuminates Austin’s history from the geologic formation of the area to the present day.
Prior to Austin Past and Present, Kocher worked as an associate producer and project manager for Cortex Communications, creating educational multimedia products for Holt, Rinehart and Winston, including the CD-ROM to accompany the middle school history curriculum, Exploring America's Past, which netted a 1998 Texas Interactive Media Achievement Award for Outstanding Achievement in Information/Reference.

Bryan Sebok
Bryan Sebok serves as the creative coordinator and producer of all DVD content for Burnt Orange Productions/UTFI films. He has produced and directed several promotional shorts for the Institute in addition to behind-the-scenes featurettes relating to The Quiet, The Cassidy Kids, and Homo Erectus.
Bryan completed his PhD in the Radio-Television-Film program in 2007 and holds a Master's degree from Emory University and a Bachelor's from North Carolina State University. Bryan's work at the Institute compliments his dissertation research on DVD Industrial Structures and Practices. Over the past four years, Bryan has worked with dozens of UT students at the Institute as well as hundreds more on campus while teaching Narrative Strategies in Film and Television, serving as Coordinating Editor for The Velvet Light Trap and FLOW, and founding UT's new student film society "The Film Loop." He has received numerous awards, including being selected as the sole Austin representative to participate in the prestigious Chancellor's Council event this past spring.
In addition to serving as the Academic Coordinator for the Film Institute, Bryan also teaches in the RTF department at The University of Texas. His Spring 2008 courses include "Convergent Hollywood," and "Producing Trailers for Online Markets," the latter sponsored by The Walt Disney Company.

Rosental Alves
Alves began his academic career in the United States in March 1996, after 27 years as a professional journalist, including seven years as a journalism professor in Brazil. He moved to Austin from Rio de Janeiro, where he was the managing editor and member of the Board of Directors of Jornal do Brasil, one of the most important Brazilian newspapers. Alves worked for the paper for 23 years.
He was chosen in 1995 from approximately 200 candidates to be the first holder of the Knight Chair in International Journalism, created by a $1.5 million endowment from the James L. and John S. Knight Foundation. In 2002, Alves received a $2 million grant from the Knight Foundation to create the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, a four-year project to work in training programs with journalists from Latin America and the Caribbean. The Knight Center is based at the School of Journalism in Austin, but reaches thousands of journalists throughout the hemisphere.
For more than a decade, Alves was a foreign correspondent based in Spain, Argentina, Mexico and the United States, working for Jornal do Brasil. In 1991, he created the first online, real-time finance news service, the first of its kind in Brazil. And in 1994, Alves managed the launching of Jornal do Brasil’s online edition, making it the first Brazilian newspaper available on the Internet.
At the University of Texas at Austin, Alves has three basic areas for teaching and research: international reporting (emphasizing the work of foreign correspondents), journalism in Latin America (especially the struggle for a free press in the hemisphere), and Internet journalism (the creation of a new genre of journalism for the digital medium). He created the first class on online journalism at U.T. in the 1997-98 academic year. Alves has been a frequent speaker in conferences and has conducted numerous workshops in several countries to train journalists and journalism professors on the use of the new medium.

Bruce Pennycook, DMA
Professor Bruce Pennycook (Doctor of Musical Arts, Stanford, '78) is a composer, new media developer and media technology specialist. He taught at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario then McGill University in Montreal, Quebec where he developed undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Music Technology and held the position of Vice-Principal for Information Systems and Technology. Pennycook moved to Austin in 2002 and was appointed Professor of Music Composition and Professor of Radio-Television-Film in 2007. Pennycook has published a wide range of articles on new music and music technology. His music includes from music for video, electro-acoustic music, chamber music and music for large ensembles and these are performed throughout North America and in Europe and Asia. Prof. Pennycook teaches music composition, film scoring and digital media and conducts research in new media interface design. He is also the Panel Chair of the Digital Arts and Media program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Arie Stavchansky
Arie Stavchansky is currently a lecturer in the Radio-Television-Film department after having completed his PhD in 2007. His dissertation topic was The Perceived Credibility of Television News in Relationship to The Diffusion of Digital Post-Production Techniques. These last few years he has been teaching Special Effects & Design Studio in RTF Research interests include: Media credibility Sociological effects of interactive techniques used to produce digital media content. Codification of design knowledge and artistic expression into computational systems. Technique discovery and development for simulation and visual effects. History and mechanization of image-making techniques, and its impact on culture. Prototyping novel interfaces for human computer interaction.