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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: usc, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 9 of 9
1. ‘Palm Rot’ by Ryan Gillis

A crop-duster named investigates a mysterious explosion in the Florida Everglades.

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2. ‘Lagarto’ by Miguel Jiron

Traveling to Nicaragua with his family, a young boy finds the world a weirder, scarier, and more difficult place. And filled, stuffed, and absolutely teeming with iguanas.

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3. Santa Barbara's Shelly Lowenkopf

Shelly Lowenkopf


            Shelly Lowenkopf's numerous roles in the book world continue to flourish. He is the rare author who the knows the ins and outs of the publishing world from his early days working as the Editor-in-Chief at Sherbourne Press in 1962. The 82-year old writer taught in the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing Program for 34 years, where he was given a Lifetime teaching award, and he currently teaches at Santa Barbara City College and UCSB's College of Creative Studies. In Santa Barbara, he's best known for his longtime writing workshop with Leonard Tourney and his Pirate Workshop at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Although he is no longer teaching with Leonard Tourney or the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, students can find Shelly at UCSB, SBCC, or his Saturday workshop at Cafe Luna in Summerland, CA. Shelly has seen former students, such as Catherin Ryan Hyde, rise to the ranks of best-sellers. He's also had a hand in seeing over 500 books through the editorial and production process.
            The closing of bookstores, publishing houses, and the continuing evolution of the publishing world hasn't stopped Shelly from staying in the game and pushing his students to stick to their passion, produce the best book they can possibly write, and then sell it to a publisher. One can say love for craft and his students keeps Shelly enthusiastic about helping writers meet their goals. He has taken on the students of his late wife Anne Lowenkopf, who shared his love for writers who put words on paper.  
            In fact, the elusive concept of love figures in the 12 stories that make up his new short fiction collection, Love Will Make You Drink & Gamble, Stay OutLate at Night (White Whisker Books 2014). Of Lowenkopf's new book, bloguero Manuel Ramos says:
            "Lowenkopf unveils Santa Barbara's passion with clever tales about men and women (and cats and dogs) that surprise and delight. Subtle humor mixes with the loneliness and desire, but we laugh with the characters, not at them, because we see ourselves in these people. In the stories of Shelly Lowenkopf, we remember that love is life--long live love."
Love Will Make You Drink & Gamble, Stay Out Late at Night

            Originally from Los Angeles, Shelly has fond memories of riding the bus with his deaf grandmother to visit the Kosher Butcher shop in Boyle Heights. He later moved to Santa Barbara and the city remains dear to his heart. He's had opportunities to return to the bustle of New York City, but prefers sleepy Santa Barbara, the backdrop for his short stories. "Santa Barbara reminds me of L.A. when I was growing up," he said, "That L.A had no smog, an ocean, and relatively little traffic, and people were awfully nice."
            I asked Shelly what makes a student stand out as the one who might have a breakthrough book and his answer involved three  'r' words: reading, rewriting, and revising.
            "The ones who made it were readers. They read everything, not just books in their fields. They don't mind rewriting. Most actors don't mind rehearsals."
            His own love of reading is present in the ways he brings a poetic quality and an excitement to archaic and anachronistic phrases, such as a hair shirt. In his story, "Coming to Terms," the author describes his character Charlie as:
"Charlie began to slog about as though his soul wore a hair shirt. Vulnerable, flinching at the merest confrontation, his viscera would wrench up on him at the sight of borrowed books, notes and correspondence, concert ticket stubs, or any trace of the confetti of his failed relationship (Love, p.161)."
            Shelly's next books include a mystery novel and a writing handbook that uses acting techniques to reveal a story's subtext. Check out Lowenkopf's, The FictionWriter's Handbook, a resource for both readers and writers. He is also a regular blogger at www.lowenkopf.com.

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4. “Passer Passer” by Louis Morton

The Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival is made possible by sponsor JibJab and their strong support for emerging filmmakers.


Slap on a pair of headphones before you watch Louis Morton’s Passer Passer, a graduation film produced at the Univeristy of Southern California. The film uses the atmospheric sounds of urban settings—recorded in both Los Angeles and Tokyo—to create a dense and exciting soundscape that evokes the organized cacophony of city life. From the smallest sounds, like the tinkle of a fork in a restaurant, to the brashest car alarms, everything is mixed into one well-simmered city stew.

Morton matches the audio with a fresh visual style that mixes the abstract and the cartoon. His loose, fleshy animation loops and vivid sense of color add the right quality of whimsy. There is a clear visual journey, from day to night, and we are whisked from scene to scene at the frantic pace of city life. The camera moves diagonally across the space in a way that further elicits the stress of city life. By the end of the film, we’re ready to go home and get a good night’s rest, before it starts all over again the next morning.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker Louis Morton:

THE IDEA

One initial spark came from a podcast, in which a musician explained how he categorized several escalators in his city by sound. It got me thinking about the huge array of sounds that I encounter every day in Los Angeles and if I could develop a way to categorize the most common sounds through animation. Oftentimes I’m about to fall asleep and a car alarm goes off, and I imagine a little guy spazzing out to the rhythm of the alarm, and it makes it less annoying. I wanted to take all these city sounds like the alarm, give them personalities and organize them into a system. My plan was to walk around recording audio for a few months and then listen and animate what I heard.

TOOLBOX

All audio was recorded on a handheld Zoom H2 that was usually in my pocket to avoid looking like a nosy creep. I did a rough sound edit in Adobe Audition before handing it off to the super-talented Katie Gately, who used Ableton Live for the sound design and mix. I animated everything in Flash on a Cintiq. Most of the cleanup and shading was done in Photoshop. Compositing was done in After Effects.

CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED

The animation was mostly driven by the audio, so it was difficult to know if a scene was working until I had watched it with sound. Katie and I developed an interesting work method. I would give her small sections of the audio, and she would alter it in such an interesting way that it would often give me new ideas for the animation. Especially in the second half of the film, the animation developed organically with her sound design work. It was definitely a collaborative process, which was very rewarding, but more challenging than a traditional approach would have been. Technique-wise, I wanted to experiment with how many frames it would take to make an action or character readable, and as a result I think I learned a lot about the craft of 2D animation.

INSPIRATIONS

Living in L.A. and (briefly) in Tokyo and soaking in the sounds of each city. In Tokyo: zoning out in a train station. In Los Angeles: merging with highway traffic and walking down Hollywood Boulevard at night. The blogs 99% Invisible (the escalator episode), Radiolab, and Adventures in Audio helped me form the initial ideas for the film. I was also influenced by the “city symphony” films of the 1920s and the work of Norman McLaren, especially Spook Sport. Also inspiring were: Jules Engels’s background designs for UPA, the Disney “Silly Symphonies,” the awesome work of my classmates and the support of the faculty at USC.

WHERE YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS

I hope to be in a position at a studio where I can be designing, animating or directing short-format work, commercials and ideally title sequences or educational type work. I love working in the super-short format, and I like using animation to explain things. And no matter what, I plan to continue making short films!

FILMMAKER WEBSITES

WEBSITE: LouisJMorton.com
BLOG: LouisJMorton.blogspot.com

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5. Cartoon Brew Reveals Lineup For Its 2013 Student Animation Festival

For the fourth year in a row, we are delighted to present the Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival, the premier online showcase for animated short premieres by student filmmakers.

Our 2013 festival offers one of the strongest and most dynamic slates of short films since we launched the festival. Chosen from a record-breaking 266 film submissions, the eight films in this year’s festival represent a remarkably high level of creative vision and filmmaking skill. The films selected were made by adventurous filmmakers who show a commitment to exploring the narrative and visual possibilities of the animation art form, and whose ideas and concepts are fully realized.

More quality student work was submitted than ever before. In fact, half of the films in this year’s festival are from schools that haven’t been in the festival during its first three years—Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, DePaul University, University of Southern California and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. On the other hand, Eric Ko is the first filmmaker who has been selected twice for the festival; his junior film Troubleshooting was a part of our festival last year.

Each of the eight filmmakers whose work is featured in this year’s festival will receive a cash award of $500 (US), thanks to the generosity of our festival sponsor JibJab. Further, Evan Spiridellis, the co-founder of JibJab, will select one additional film to receive the Grand Prize and an extra $500, for a cash prize totalling $1,000 US.

The festival will debut on Monday, July 8th, and a new film will be presented every week throughout July and August. And now, we proudly present the 2013 class of Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival:


Lady with Long Hair
Directed by Barbara Bakos
School: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Hungary)
Synopsis: An old lady relives memories of her life contained within her hair.
Running time: 8 min 45 s


Sun of a Beach
Directed by Natan Moura
School: Sheridan College (Canada)
Synopsis: Shunned for shining a little too brightly, the poor sun feels alone in its search to connect and be wanted.
Running time: 1 min 20 s


Dumb Day
Directed by Kevin Eskew


School: DePaul University (USA)
Synopsis: Flower sniffing, carpet calisthenics, and other restless leisure-time activities. Domestic life can be tough. Finally, the day breaks.
Running time: 9 min 30 s


Brain Divided
Directed by Josiah Haworth, Joon Shik Song and Joon Soo Song
School: Ringling College of Art and Design (USA)
Synopsis: The story about an ordinary guy who meets a not so ordinary girl, but his brain cells can’t agree on how to go about winning her over, which leads to Conflict!
Running time: 5 min


Our Son (우리 아들)
Directed by Eric Ko
School: Rhode Island School of Design (USA)
Synposis: Celestial bodies and the fragility of happiness.
Running time: 4 min 30 s


i
Directed by Isabela Dos Santos
School: California Institute of the Arts (USA)
Synopsis: Hand-drawn animation and dance performance intersect and interact in this short piece that deals with a well-known question: Who am I?
Running time: 3 min 35s


Wolf Within
Directed by Alex Horan
School: Massachusetts College of Art and Design (USA)
Synopsis: A father prepares his son for a world without him.
Running time: 9 min 35 s


Passer Passer
Directed by Louis Morton
School: University of Southern California (USA)
Synopsis: An animated city symphony celebrates the hidden world of background noise. Field recordings from the streets of Los Angeles and Tokyo drive imagined characters and cycles that build to form a living musical creature.
Running time: 3 min 47 s

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6. “Semáforo” by Simón Wilches-Castro

USC student Simón Wilches-Castro sent a message to let us know about his new short, Semáforo (Stoplight), inspired by the street performers of Colombia:

Due to the ongoing war in the Colombian jungles, many people are forced to flee their rural territories and find refugee in capital cities. Their only mean of acquiring money is to put on shows under the city stoplights. Some dress like clowns or do acrobatics, others spit fire or juggle; and some show the only thing they have left: deformities and amputations in exchange for some sympathy and change. This is the life of the people who live under a stoplight and the people who watch them.

Castro’s animation (made in Photoshop) is fun and creative, and he takes full advantage of the cinematic possibilities of the medium. The film will screen in competition at the Annecy festival next month.

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7. Ypulse Essentials: Facebook To Track Brand Sentiment, Rookie Debuts, College Costs Both High And Low

Marketers have long wanted to know what social media (can do for their brands, and they’re going to find out soon! Facebook will be tracking brands during the 2012 London Olympics, tracking sentiment prior to a campaign’s start and... Read the rest of this post

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8. CEUs, MaryBeth Whalen and Tara Lazar

It’s official, teachers can get credit for going to the Write2ignite conference!

From our website: One (1.0) Professional CEU is available to interested Write2Ignite! registrants though the University of South Carolina. Great for teachers, child care providers  and college students.

For more info, check out this link: https://www.write2ignite.com/Cont.html 

I also need to give a shout out to our kenynote speaker – MaryBeth Whalen! She’s a mom to half a dozen youngin’s – yet still finds time to write numerous books and speak at conferences all over! We are blessed she’ll be joining us at Write2ignite February 18-19!

One more thing: If you haven’t yet checked out the latest blog entry on the Write2ignite blog, please do! Today’s post is our Thrift and Gift series by Linda Andersen. She highlights a different free or low cost writing resource every week.

And this week Linda highlights Tara Lazar and her fab PiBoIdMo contest.  Linda also shares her experience with Tara as a critiquer. (Hint, she’s fabulous at that aspect of the writing business, too!) You can find the post HERE. (And while you’re surfing, check out Tara’s site HERE.)

I hope to see some of you in February at the conference. If you have any questions, let me know!


Filed under: writing for children Tagged: continuing education credits, North Greenville University, PiBoIdMo, Tara Lazar, University of SC, USC 4 Comments on CEUs, MaryBeth Whalen and Tara Lazar, last added: 1/30/2011
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9. Ypulse Youth Media Movers & Shakers

Today we bring you another installment of Youth Media Movers and Shakers. We've culled through industry publications looking for the recent executive placements we think you should know about. If you have executive news that you want us to... Read the rest of this post

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