BOC Week 4 Photo Challenge - Movie Poster

This is a movie poster for a short film that I had originally composed the music for. It was for the 48 Hour Film Festival. The chosen genre for our group was "silent film." I originally wasn't participating in this event, but I joined later because they needed a pianist who knew ragtime and can compose on the spot. This is where I got the call and became on board! It was a really great opportunity to experience the real world and how the audio/video world work in the film industry. It got intense and extremely stressful but myself and the engineering team were able to pull it off, barely! It was surprising that alot of the music you hear in this short was previously recorded as improvisation without a locked video edit, or a guide for that matter and still worked when plugging it to different scenes. One of my favorite parts was playing along with when Chap was trying to sip out of the other guy's drink. It's a great comedic short. Click here to watch Lady and the Chap!

EOC Week 4 - Executive Summary

My business, Beat Café, LLC is not only a café for friendly, stimulating conversations, and a relaxed environment, but also a venue for fun and entertaining live music performers from different genres. There are only 3 other known café-venues in the city that have struggled to maintain a constant customer volume. My efforts to engage college students and young professionals are to build a sense of community and solidarity, and most importantly a fun space to mingle. I will strategize my marketing efforts to catch the attention of these customers by having a large presence in their college campuses, professional office districts, and frequented retail stores. I will differ from my competitors in that I have a very specific goal geared towards a very specific population, so my coffee and food products, as well as music performer would be geared towards them. I plan to take out a business loan for $10,000 dollars through a trusted bank and with my qualified business partner plan to oversee a budget and annual growth rates reach 15% in 5 years.

BOC Week 3 Photo Challenge - Story Board

Here is a storyboard for a commercial that I'm going to shoot within the next two weeks. It's going to be a 30 second commercial in advertising this restaurant. It's located at the end of Chinatown on Spring Mountain and Decatur. The cuisine is Argentinian and also providing and serving other south American countries. Argentinians are known for their mate and their assorted meats, "parilladas". It's served on a grill plate with different cuts of meats and types. There are different variations on which one to get. How I'm going to do this video production is have two cameramen (a friend and me) and we're going to capture outside appearance, inside appearance, closeups on the chefs cooking, the bakery, the merchandise, and designated plates desired to show alone. There won't be an announcer, it will only be candid video capture and the information will be all voice overed. It should be fun! 

EOC Week 3 - Where are you now and where are you going?

Right now I have five classes left to graduate and I need to start thinking about what I'm going to do after graduation. Before attending this school I knew nothing about Audio Production. I was just a musician all my life. I’ve always been musically inclined and music is one of my passions. Attending this school has made me appreciate music much more to know the basic theory of audio in general and how it works. But since I’ve been enrolled, I have left behind being a musician and just been focused in school. As we’re required to crossover with the video world, I have come to love video and film as well. That’s a whole different beast, but I can see myself working with video. I’ve always loved movies so now I can crossover between both worlds. I’ve came in contact with an arranger/composer within the last month, and it has got me thinking in getting back into playing the piano and possibly being able to be an arranger/composer myself. I can see myself in many different situations, and I feel like I will want to do more than one thing because I tend to be well-rounded and that way I won’t be bored because there will be something new to be doing everyday, within the audio, video, and musical world.

BOC Week 2 Photo Challenge - Professional Photo

This is a picture of me engineering at Digital Insight recording studio. The client was a local rapper artist who was working on his next album. Alongside, he also brought in other artists to be featured as vocals in some verses or as background vocals. In the live room we used a tube condenser Audix microphone that ran into the Avalon tube condenser preamp. This was a pretty cool experience because I was able to work with real clients and to utilize my knowledge on the spot and work on a timed schedule. Not only is making the client happy about what he wants, at the same time it is also the engineer’s job to rush things along to not waste time and make the process long. I was able to keep that in line. Usually when recording rap artists, you record the same verse at least three times, each on a separate track, panned left and right and the one with overdub to exaggerate and bring out certain words pop out as the artists desires. The whole process was about three hours to record three different songs at its entirety. I was able to obtain and perform proper etiquette as an engineer and made the workplace enjoyable for everyone present. It was really fun to be able to engineer in a real life, professional situation!  

EOC Week 2 - Get Some Copyright Law Under Your Belt

http://filmmakeriq.com/category/screenwriting/protecting-your-work/
While only a subcategory to this massive online filmmaking community, this webpage is loaded with great content. Often pooling top stories from around the internet it gives you some of the most entertaining and useful information that I have come across. For someone looking for specific examples of copyright in action this is a great page.


http://www.alllaw.com/topics/intellectual_property
Intellectual property is the area of law that deals with protecting the rights of those who create original works. It covers everything from original plays and novels to inventions and company identification marks. The purpose of intellectual property laws are to encourage new technologies, artistic expressions and inventions while promoting economic growth. When individuals know that their creative work will be protected and that they can benefit from their labor, they are more likely to continue to produce things that create jobs, develop new technology, make processes more efficient, and create beauty in the world around us.


http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
This website, which has been up and running since 1996, is filled with many different pages all with information pertaining to copyright laws and regulations. The webpage is updated pretty regularly with new stories and examples of practices. Actual attorneys and professors are used for insight giving a balanced view and opinion about certain topics.


http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
This page is filled with a good amount of quick and dirty questions and myths that may have been lurking in your head about copyright. The explanations are very simple and they don't try to through the legal jargon book at you. For someone looking for a couple of quick tips and popular questions this is a good site.

http://www.technologies.msu.edu/inventors/intellectual-property
Intellectual property (IP) is any work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as a manuscript or design, and can be protected by statute or legislation, such as patent or copyright. It includes inventions, discoveries, know-how, show-how, processes, unique materials, copyrightable works, original data, and other creative or artistic works. IP also includes the physical embodiment of intellectual efforts (e.g., models, machines, devices, apparatus, instrumentation, circuits, computer programs and visualizations, biological materials, chemicals, other compositions of matter, plans, and records of research).

BOC Week 1 Photo Challenge - Xtranormal Film Festival: Courage!

For this assignment, we had to participate in an online film festival. We were given the xtranormal.com website to make an account and to make up a video that is a minute long. You can choose different characters and themes. I didn't really know what I would do, but it had to be comical. Upon deciding what I wanted to write about, it dawned on me that people don't stand up for what they believe and let life pass by and take crap from people and situations. That's where I decided to base it off "courage." Being in the entertainment industry, you have to be able to be courageous in putting your work out to the public. Even if your ideas and work get shut down, persistence and having a little faith and courage will one day make it big. There are many examples where people are able to be successful and because they don’t know how to achieve that, it never happens. Even if you didn't think it would. At first it reminded me of the Wizard of Oz, and so I took a bit from that and added some other things on my own. I titled it Courage!

EOC Week 1 - What Sacrifices Are You Willing to Make for Your Career?

As much as no one can't have everything they want at all times, making career choices is something that life brings to you to experience. Starting with the fact that I’m currently attending college, unfortunately I am getting by with a “pay your bills” job. Most, if not, almost everyone usually goes this process and it is sometimes dreadful and painful when you are not in your line of work and your desired work, let alone, a part time because taking more than a full load at school is already enough to try and handle. But as time passes and you get closer to graduation, the thought of a “real” job is now to think about. Where do I go? What job should I take? (If different offers on the table) and what am I willing to sacrifice for the bigger picture in the end? Unless you know somebody from within the company, and even then it’s hard to make it work, you’re going to have to start at a low-paying, very bottom position in a company, and eventually work your way up. Let’s say this is for your line of work, but what if there’s a job position that pays very well, but is not in your line of work? Either route there is a sacrifice to make. For the time being, I think I am more willing to take the good pay, with benefits to save money first until I make the other sacrifice to take a pay cut, which I would have money stocked up from the previous job, to then work myself up in the chain in my desired line of work.