Motion media, visual effects students get "Inspired"
By Kim Fraser
On April 12-13, the school hosted Inspire 2012, an annual conference focusing on motion graphics and visual effects, at the SCAD Museum of Art. The conference provided students with access to industry professionals in their chosen fields.
Joan Raspo, a creative director at VH1 and MTV, presented a lecture on the evolution of screen branding. The lecture focused primarily on how television branded their own networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, VH1, MTV and Comedy Central. She encouraged her audience to engage themselves in the lecture by tweeting her their questions.
“This is a convo,” said Raspo. “We are going through a revolution and no one knows where it’s going to land.”
But branding was only one small part of the discussion at Inspire. Lauren Hartstone, director and designer at Imaginary Forces, emphasized the word “collaboration,” she highlighted the key elements of the collaboration between a production company and an agency, Imaginary Forces and Reese’s, respectively. She showed the entire process — from concept to completion — on four different commercial projects they’ve worked on together.
Inspire came to a close over hors d’ouvres and soft drinks, allowing members of the SCAD community to socialize with leaders of the industry, such as Jeff Kleiser, Richard Edlund, Jerry Tessendorf and Dennis Miller.
Miller, the founder of Visual Music Marathon, said events like this are all about outreach for him.
“I just wanted to come down and let [students] know about the types of artwork,” said Miller. “They don’t necessarily have to go work in Hollywood for Pixar. There are lots of opportunities where animation and film are very highly valued and hopefully they’ll keep an open mind.”
CoMotion 2012, in partnership with Inspire, continued on April 14 at the SCAD Museum of Art. During CoMotion, an event created for students by students, participants had the opportunity to showcase their work during a portfolio review with top industry companies.
“I went with BIGSMACK and SportsMEDIA,” said fourth-year film and television major Ricardo de Matheu from San Jose, Costa Rica. “It’s just like getting an actual professional tell you that you’re actually doing a good job.”
Lectures and panel discussions continued in the museum’s theater. The panel discussion consisted of Angela de Oliveira, executive producer at Superfad; Will Johnson, creative director at Gentleman Scholar; Heidi Erney, executive producer at BIGSMACK; and Darren Jaffe, head of production at Superfad.
CoMotion ended with a showcase of the top three entries of students’ work in 13 different categories. The “Best in Show” category went to John Lin, a graduate motion media design student from Los Angeles. His piece entitled, “In Paradise,” was a promotional short film for the OFFF festival, an annual post-digital culture festival in Barcelona.
“I guess I wanted to make something that was about inspiration, about OFFF, but not directly talking about it,” said Lin. “There’s moments of homage to this director I really like, Chris Barker.”
But Lin was not the only one inspired. Graduate motion media student Nguveren Torkwase Ahua from Nigeria said the lectures provided invaluable information about the job market, how to get clients and how to maintain those connections.
Ahua stated that,“being able to talk with these industries’ ‘super heroes’ face to face was a fantastic opportunity.”
