Digital Media Summer Institute 2009

1 May 2009

Date: May 25th to July 17th, 2009

Locations: University of Porto (UPorto) and New University of Lisbon (FCSH/UNL)

Overview

The Summer Institute 2009 is a unique event organized by the UT Austin|Portugal Program comprising several intensive courses that cover different areas of the Digital Media Program such as cinema, music and sound, animation and journalism, among others. The courses will be taught at the graduate level.

The Summer Institute’s activities will be taught by renowned UT Austin Professors and aim to increase our understanding of and abilities to work with digital media technologies.  More detail about the professors and the course content is available at http://colab.ic2.utexas.edu/dm/courses/2009-summer-institute/.

 

PROGRAM

Location: University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Courses (by application only):

Online Journalism Workshop – Rosental Alves – June 1st to June 5th (Time to be announced)

Advanced Animation Workshop – Geoff Marslett – June 15th to June 30th/10am to 5pm

Film Preservation and Historiography Workshop – Caroline Frick – June 15th to June 26th/2:30pm to 5:30pm

Collaborative Documentary Workshop – Karen Kocher – June 15th to June 26th/10am to 6pm

Sound for Picture: Production and Post Workshop– Andy Garrison – June 22nd to July 7th/5pm to 8pm

Screenwriting for New Media Workshop – Stuart Kelban – June 29th to July 10th/4pm to 8pm

Creating Music and Designing Interactive Music Workshop – Bruce Pennycook – July 6th to July 17th/3pm to 6pm

 

Location: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Courses (by application only):

Convergent Hollywood – Bryan Sebok – May 25th to June 5th/2pm to 6pm

Online Journalism – Rosental Alves – May 25th to May 29th /2pm to 6pm (Time to be confirmed)

Screenwriting – Richard Lewis – May 25th to June 5th/9am to 1pm

Technology and Culture – Craig Watkins – June 8th to June 19th/2pm to 6pm

Intro to Digital Documentary Production – Nancy Schiesari – June 8th to June 19th/9am to 1pm

 

How to apply for the Courses (Lisbon and Porto):

Interested prospective applicants should send an application letter, to up to a 350 words, and CV (all in English) for each Course to which they wish to apply. The name of the Course should be written on the subject of the email (one email per Course).

Please also state your full name, address, age, highest degree achieved and a contact.

Email your applications to utaustinportugal@fct.mctes.pt.

Fee per Course: 30€ (paid only by the selected applicants to the universities where the Courses will take place).

Note: The FCSH/UNL Film and Television Master students may attend the Courses taking place at the university for free with permission from their program coordinator.

 

Additional Information

Course Descriptions:

Screenwriting for New Media

Whether writing a feature-length screenplay or a 3-minute webisode, a screenwriter’s goal is to tell a good story. In this two-week seminar, students will collaborate on writing their own multi-part webseries. Breaking into small “writing teams”, students will develop characters and storylines as a group, then assign members to write individual webisodes. In addition to the creative work, the class will critically examine several produced webseries and film scripts, exploring how traditional dramatic principles of character, story and structure have changed – and have not changed – when applied to new media.

Animation Advanced

This intermediate class is an opportunity for beginner level animators to refine their basic skills. Like the introduction course the intermediate class includes instruction in several animation software packages, but the main focus is the underlying animation techniques. During the two week course students would be required to write a short animated piece. They would then be required to animate this piece using three distinct methods (stop motion, hand drawn, and digital puppet). Working on these three projects the students will be asked to refine basic drawing skills, story development, basic animation skills, compositing, chroma keying and character animation. The class will focus on 2D and stop motion animation. The culmination of the class would be the three versions of their short (one minute) animations.

Film Preservation and Historiography

This course introduces one of the most complicated and under-studied components of the media industries: Preservation. Beginning with a contextualization of the film preservation movement, and of its precedents in European collecting practice, the course will employ both a theoretical and practical approach to archival media product. We will discuss the merits (and drawbacks) of defining media product – from Hollywood features and educational films, to home movies and government propaganda – as “artifact.” The impact of copyright and physical deterioration upon the construction of film history will underscore much of the course discussion, particularly as to how “national cinemas” have been and continue to be constructed. This course is designed for those interested in film history and the role of new technologies (i.e. YouTube and others) on media canons. “Film Preservation and Historiography” is open to all levels, as no prior knowledge of this material is necessary.

Sound for Picture: Production and Post

Sound sneaks past the prefrontal cortex, directly into the heart and the soul. Film is a warm medium and sound turns up the heat. This course introduces ways of thinking about sound for picture and some basic production and pos-tproduction techniques for applying your ideas. We will digitally record dialog, ambiance, and effects, add music, and then bend, twist, stretch and cut sound. We will edit-to-picture on Pro Tools and make a stereo mix.

Collaborative Documentary

The collaborative documentary course is designed for those who are interested in a hands-on exploration of the ways that film language may be used to create thematic portraits of place, in creative interaction with a group. Participants will be divided into production groups that will gather footage, related to the chosen themes, from a particular geographic location in the City. Using mobile devices and Web 2.0, the group will stay in touch throughout the seminar to guide one another in the gathering of the footage related to each theme. The footage from each group will then be shared to create a series of 2-minute thematic portraits of the City.

Creating and Designing Interactive Music

Objectives: In this intensive two-week course we will examine a variety of techniques for the creation of real-time interactive music. We will explore how to design hybrid electro-acoustic pieces using different kinds of controllers from MIDI and the popular wii-mote to more complex Wifi-based systems. All software will be developed in Max/MSP/Jitter (Max 5) plus some external packages as needed.

Plan: Each day there will be a lecture component then a workshop component. We will also listen to and discuss examples of interactive music to provide a context for the work.

Given the very short time period for this course we may divide the class into small teams to work collectively on their final project.

Outcome: At the end of the two-week period each student and/or team will demonstrate their interactive piece in an informal “concert” setting.

Requirements: Ideally each student should come to class with a Macintosh or PC laptop running Max 5. You can get a 90 day free student trial of Max 5 from Cycling74.com. If you own an interface device such as a wii-mote, iPhone or iPod Touch, joystick or have some interesting MIDI controllers these may be incorporated into your project.

Students should have background in composing electroacoustic music with packages such as Logic or ProTools and be familiar with the basic operations of Max/MSP 5.

Online Journalism (Porto and Lisbon)

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.

Technology and Culture

The course is designed to explore the growing role and social consequences of digital media in everyday life. What does it mean to be digital? How are humans and the world we build evolving along with digital technologies? Drawing from both critical studies perspectives and empirical-based examinations of specific communication technologies the course seeks to illuminate some of the theoretical, social, and political issues central in the rise of digital media. The course critically investigates the rise and consequences of “virtual identities” and “virtual publics”, the social and behavioral aspects of mobile technology, as well as the increasingly social role of the web. The second week of the class is devoted to students working in small groups and conducting field experiments-in-depth interviews, participant observations, and virtual ethnographies. Students will present the results of their research to the class.

Convergent Hollywood

“Convergent Hollywood” is designed to introduce you to a variety of digital technologies and their impacts on Hollywood’s business model and product output, as Hollywood has shifted from what might be called “Conglomerate Hollywood” to “Convergent Hollywood.” We will examine both practical and theoretical aspects of digitalization, including the various industrial, cultural, economic, political, and technological contexts into which digital technologies are introduced and diffuse. In so doing, we will work to analyze and contextualize recent and dramatic shifts in the nature of Hollywood business practices. Our concentration for the first half of the workshop will be on digital technologies shifting the nature of business practices and structural organizations of media companies. We will identify strategies for success and key players in the field.

The second half of the workshop will focus on digital distribution, digital exhibition, and the commercialization of DVD. This section of the course will examine DVD as a case study in digital distribution, industrial formation and technological diffusion in the post-internet age. We’ll investigate the past, present, and future of ancillary markets and explore how the DVD story demonstrates the collective power of the Big Six media conglomerates and their counterparts in the consumer electronics and IT industries. The course will conclude with discussion of the future of digital entertainment in television, film, and in advertising.

Finally, the debates we have in class should highlight the continuing cultural relevancy of the entertainment industries as well as the role played by digital technology in shifting “Conglomerate Hollywood” to “Convergent Hollywood.”

Screenwriting

Over the course of the two weeks, the class will treat its members as a writing staff and, collectively, we will outline and work on writing the first act of multiple projects. We will brainstorm the ideas together, and writers will be assigned particular scenes or acts to write. So, for instance, “Joe Writingstudent” might be assigned to write the first 5 pages of comedy script A that the class has outlined together, then the following day be assigned the second 5 pages of horror script B, then the following day be assigned to re-write the first ten pages of action script C in collaboration with Mary Writingstudent.

This process enables screenwriters to look at writing from a completely different perspective. Lastly, this process will be instructive in that in the ‘real world,’ screenwriters rarely work on spec scripts as we do here at UT (and, indeed, as is done at all writing programs) — they work on assignments for people with whom they have to collaborate — producers, directors, development execs, etc.

Intro to Digital Documentary Production

This course is aimed at increasing a student’s proficiency in documentary production concepts and skills. In class we will examine current documentary forms to become familiar with the language of cinema verité, personal first person narration, and reality TV, as well as the more traditionally made documentary films seen on PBS and the BBC.

Specific instruction in technical areas of shooting, lighting and sound recording, will be offered in workshops and through practical application on class assignments.  Students must develop a story synopsis, proposal and/or shooting script before shooting begins. Students will work in small groups to complete a 5-6 minute documentary film in two weeks.

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.

 

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. Click here to learn more.

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 Co.

 

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 that 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 UT 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.

Geoff Marslett

Geoff Marslett is a lecturer in the Radio-TV-Film department at UT Austin, specializing in film production and animation.

Craig Watkins

S. Craig Watkins is a professor of Radio-TV-Film and Sociology at UT Austin. His interests focus on race and media, hip hop, and youth-based digital media cultures. He presented a public talk on Youth and New Media during the Summer Institute in 2008.

Caroline Frick

Caroline Frick’s research and teaching interests focus upon the evolution of the moving image archiving movement, cross-cultural approaches to historical preservation, and digital media libraries. She is the founder and executive director of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, an organization devoted to the discovery and preservation of media related to the state.

Nancy Schiesari

Nancy Schiesari has directed, produced and been a cinematographer on both broadcast documentaries and narrative features for over twenty years. She recently produced and directed Tattooed Under Fire, and Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer, a full-length documentary that premiered on PBS Independent Lens. Her other works as director include History Man, a Portrait of Martin Scorsese, for the BBC, and Green Flutes, a feature documentary for England’s Channel 4. Nancy has experience as a Director of Photography on over 30 documentaries and feature films broadcast for England’s Channel 4, BBC, ABC, National Geographic, and PBS. She was nominated for a 2002 Television Emmy for outstanding cinematography on The Human Face (producer John Cleese).

Stuart Kelban

Stuart Kelban, a professional screenwriter, is on the faculty of the Radio-TV-Film Department at UT Austin. In June 2008, he led the workshop– “Screenwriting for New (and Old) Media”–at the University of Porto’s Multimedia Masters program.