Gavilan host to summer institute on digital media
entertainment
Tucked behind the library at Gavilan College is a media lab that
is the heart of the digital media program at the local community
college
– a program that is so new and it just graduated its first two
students this year.
Gavilan host to summer institute on digital media entertainment
Tucked behind the library at Gavilan College is a media lab that is the heart of the digital media program at the local community college – a program that is so new and it just graduated its first two students this year.
Professors and students in the program are hoping to up the hype about the program this summer with their first Digital Media Entertainment Summer Institute. The summer institute is open to high school and college students, media professionals, educators or anyone who would like to learn more about digital media during a four-week session at Gavilan. The first two days of the institute will be free to the public and include talks by those working in the field from Apple Computer staff to local web designers.
After the first two days, those enrolled in the summer institute will choose a project they want to work on for the remainder of the session. At the end, the projects will be shared in class and Apple Computers has offered prizes for the best projects in each category.
Barbara Graham, who just finished her degree in digital media, but has a few general education classes to complete before transferring, plans to use the summer session to complete a memorial for her mother who recently died.
“I can take all these old photos and digitize them,” she said of a pile of old family photos she scanned in the lab one afternoon. “Photos won’t last, videos won’t last. I have all these images that I can use to create a project.”
Graham started the digital media program with her daughter, who is now 25 and attending San Francisco State University. Graham had been laid off from a job and took a video editing class with Robert Beede, the head of the digital media program. After the class, she took another digital media class until she finally decided to complete her associate’s degree.
Gavilan College hired Beede five years ago to put together a program in digital media that would incorporate elements of video production, web design and digital art. Beede has a long history working with multimedia, dating back to his days as an animator with Apple Computers Inc., and has a graduate student working with midi music.
“We’re a growing field,” Beede said. “Multi-media are firmly embedding itself with pod casts, video on Web sites and MySpace pages. Even cell phones do video now.”
Starting a new program isn’t an easy feat, but Beede had the experience of starting programs at other community colleges, including a music technology program he created with colleagues at Cabrillo College in 1992.
“I had to write the courses, create applications, find a lab and get money,” Beede said, of the Gavilan program. “I sat in on grant meetings. We put together 13 to 15 courses and got approved by the chancellor.”
The digital-media lab is Beede’s pride and joy, as well as the talk of the campus among his students. The lab has 26 Apple computer stations that come complete with all the software required to edit video, create a movie soundtrack or make a Web site. Beede claims it has one of the fastest Ethernet connections in the county. The lab has a high quality projector and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound so students can share their projects at the end of each semester.
“We have literally one of the best labs any place,” Beede said. “I had a great dean who said ‘Do what you want.'”
He did have to persuade the PC-laden campus that Apple computers were the only ones that would work in his lab. The video editing software the students use in the lab is Final Cut Pro, an apple software program. “Cold Mountain,” the civil war epic starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, was edited by Walter Murch using the program and several apple computers.
The digital media program is continually adapting. Bob Peacock, another professor who works closely with Beede, teaches 3-D modeling classes that can relate to mechanical, architectural or animation design. He and Beede just had curriculum approved for a new video game focus in the digital media program, though the Chancellor’s office still needs to accept it.
“Things go up and down, but this is a very good area in Silicon Valley,” Peacock said. “We have all the software for modeling, animation and telling stories. We even have a science fiction and a Japanime club.”
The Summer Institute is July 5 – July 27. It is open to the public July 5 and 6 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Enrollment in the full session is $48 and earns participants 1 unit. For more information on the Summer Institute or the Digital Media program, visit www.gavilan.edu/DigitalMedia or call 409-847-1400 ext. 5604.
