Cross-eyed Studio

This is the first blog entry for a series of classes I am co-teaching that is called Introduction to Media Production. My friend John McLeod and I are teaching middle and high school students this introductory course through our local homeschool co-op. We had 14 students our first week, and classes were cancelled the second week, leaving us with a total of 11 weeks to cover all of the basics and attempt a final project -- either a music video or a TV commercial. Is it a daunting challenge? Oh yeah. And though I don't have enough time to lay out all the concepts we'll be discussing in the classroom, I would like to keep a running record of the topics in some detail here so that everyone can benefit in some way.  Here goes!

Discussion: What is Art?

After introducing ourselves, we entered into a discussion about what art is. In general, I wanted to emphasize the concept that media producers, editors, designers, and engineers are all artists -- people who conceive of an idea and then execute it. Whether the soundtrack for a film, the logo for a company, and so on, so much of what makes great media great is the artists who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring it to life. And creativity has been handed down generation after generation since the first man was created in the image of God, the ultimate artist. Challenge yourself to think about all media, whether you're consuming it or creating it, in terms of being art -- something made on-purpose, something of transcendent beauty.

Lecture: A Brief History of Mass Media

Being Born Into a World of Mass Media

All of you were born into a world of mass media. We can listen to talk radio on the AM band, and if we get tired of that, music and crude DJ’s on the FM band. And if we get tired of that, there’s satellite radio. And if we get tired of that, there’s our CD’s, iPods, and podcasts. Any time we feel we need an update, we can find out what Britney Spears has been up to, whether on the radio, broadcast TV, cable TV, satellite TV, HDTV, in magazines, newspapers, on Britney’s own personal blog, through her fan’s opinions on the Britney Spears discussion board, or on FoxNews.com, CNN.com, DrudgeReport.com, or wikipedia.org.

You can see a touchdown on the Super Bowl a few seconds after it happens, and then type your thoughts about the game on a personal blog for the whole world to see faster than you could call all of your friends to brag that your team won. Your computers let you watch movies and listen to music. Oh, and that same computer allows you to create your own movies and music too! In fact, you might start having so much fun crafting your own creation that you start thinking it would be fun to pursue a job as a video editor, a recording engineer, a print manager, TV news reporter, or a web developer. And you can, because you were born into a world of mass media. But it wasn’t always been a world of mass media.