New Semester, New Rules

Wow has it been a long time since I last posted...
As you all know, my time at BSN has since expired, and I find myself sitting back realizing just how lucky I am to have participated in it.

Not everyone has the opportunities I have been given at Middle Creek, and I am truly blessed to be given the chance to advance my abilities in the direction of my career path.

Given the new semester, I felt inclined to post as a lot has happened in so short a time... To start, we are now less than 2 weeks away from the SWAC Conference Tournament, that Middle Creek is so lucky to be hosting this year.  Of course, with that comes the daunting task of preparing for such an important couple of days with The Sports Block.  Yes, we will absolutely be covering that so be sure to hop on over to www.sportsblock.net on February 19th and 21st to watch!!  This (if all goes to plan) will be the best Sports Block broadcast in its history.  It is shaping up to be comparable to something you may see on ESPN or even FOX Sports.  I, along with a lot of my classmates, have been busy for weeks preparing our insert packages and special content for this tournament, and so much blood, sweat, and tears (all from my macbook that is...) has been put into it.

As if that wasn't enough, at the same time, our local SkillsUSA chapter is preparing to take off for State Competitions in early April.  Today was our regional competition, and the talent our group has shown is astounding.  We have by far the best animator I have seen in Alex Smith, who is extremely talented, and hand draws EVERYTHING.  We also have a new couple in Patrick Pastrana and Melanie Jarvis, who are looking to blow away their competition in Television and Video.  There are also countless more students who are stepping up to the plate in a big way and participating this year.  We are competing in 4, thats right, 4 new contests this year that Middle Creek never has before.  Engineering Technology and Design as well as Robotics are being led by Mrs. Trevino this year and Obi Juan Marin!  Zach Arn is also competing in Photography, and is looking to make a splash in an extremely difficult competition.  Finally, we are even (possibly) competing in Job Interview this year!! I am so excited not only because this branches away a little bit from just straight Digital Media, but it also gives us a chance to introduce students to the Digital Media field in a whole new way.  We produce the opening ceremonies at State Competitions... That means students from Ms. Trevino's class, and the speech classes will be introduced to all kinds of new things from the production of a show, to operating cameras and spotlights, and even live interviews.  In short, I am extremely excited, if you can't already tell :)


That about sums up my first week of 2nd Semester for me.... OH and I am currently waiting to hear back from NC State Design School... HOPEFULLY, one day that may be a part of my post here :)

Roar baby ROAR

Yes I know, this is now the second post I have titled after the Katy Perry song, I just can't seem to get away from it! At school, Mr. Petty talks about how it will be played all the time at our upcoming NC State Conference for SkillsUSA, and the NCAA seems to absolutely love it for their music videos, which by the way, I made another today! This time however, it was for volleyball, a bit easier to make exciting than cross country... I knocked that out of the park, and tomorrow I am coming in to do my weekly Tampa Bay Bucs stuff! If anyone noticed that I did not post this past Monday, no I did not forget, I was actually in Charlotte with the Digital Media teachers and our Middle Creek Sports Block seniors! We went behind the scenes at the Charlotte Bobcats arena, went courtside during the dance team's practice--erm I mean the shoot around for the players... It was awesome! I got to talk to a lady who was in the marketing department and learned a lot of interesting things!! I have also always loved basketball, so it was a plus! Not to mention the fact that I learned a ton about how to direct the Sports Block for the basketball games as I was watching the big screen for how the professionals did it! NOTE to all of the upcoming students in the Digital Media department... DO NOT under ANY circumstances sing "Shabooya" on the bus at 11 pm... Petty will kill you... And leave you in Charlotte...

For the full album check out my Google+ page at www.google.com/+jasonschmitt

Can YOU see the difference?

Today I got down and dirty with real intern work... Cataloging, organizing, and wiping 40 hard drives to send to other companies! It honestly was pretty fun thanks to the knowledge I gained from my digital media teachers. I got to act like a big shot labeling everything since I know what a Firewire is and can tell the difference between varying types of firewires!

I also got to work on by far my favorite project so far since being there, and that is the "What is the Difference" pictures for the Utah Basketball team. In these pictures I had free reign to create (or destroy) different parts of the picture so that the viewer had to find all 4 in each. This was my favorite simply because it was my first chance to do something with no rules or templates at all, just me and Photoshop. I will post a couple at the bottom of this post so that you too will be able to find the differences!! On a final note, as promised from my Google+ page earlier this week, I am unveiling another piece of my MCHS SportsBlock Fall broadcasting package! Check it out at google.com/+Jasonschmitt! Oh and by the way, one more picture, gotta love the sky that greets me on the way home from work.

Aarrghhhh!

Today I had the day that pretty much every person I know that works wants...  I got in, and due to everyone's emails malfunctioning, there was no work!!  I on the other hand, have a ton of work right now, so I decided to continue working on my Autoshop Academy animation (Follow me at plus.google.com/+jasonschmitt for updates on all my projects!)  I even got another game of ping pong in with Andrew, unfortunately his valiant effort failed him and a late comeback allowed me to win 23-21, still undefeated at the office!!  I have now noticed that I am officially the weekly Tampa Bay Buccaneers guy as well.  I receive all the jumbotron work for their weekly games and have it down pat by now.  SOOO, my day basically consisted of Ping Pong, Tampa Bay Bucs, and NCAA stuff, pretty simple!  Also, I have been thinking of a present I have in mind to give my office on departing...  The ping pong paddles there are pretty rough, duct taped up and everything. I think I will get a nice set of paddles for them upon leaving to thank them for letting me intern there!  If anyone knows of a cheap place to go to buy some great paddles let me know!  This week's gonna be a good one, with the SkillsUSA meeting at MiddleCreek on Wednesday, then returning to the office Thursday. Updates like always will be posted right on this blog so check back for more!!

Moving on

Every day I begin to learn new things and new ways to go about my work. For those of you who didn't know, every Mac actually has an application, Automator, that looks like a little robot, and this robot can help you with so much! It allows you to batch edit basically anything!! I used it specifically to rename, for example, I needed to change file names from BB GAME 1 to BB_GAME_1, and it allows you to do that without having to singularly rename each one. Functions like this will continue to help me way after I am done working there. I am now working more with the University of Utah's jumbotron videos and the fan games that they do. It has definitely been really interesting to see all these different things that go into making something that most people at a sporting event don't think twice about! Never again will I be able to go to a professional sports game without looking at the jumbotron and thinking of what went into making the video currently being played. Today although, I would like to side track just a bit. I have had the honor of helping Middle Creek High School's theatre department by creating the poster for their production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Last night I was fortunate enough to go see it, and it is amazing how good of a show they were able to put together. There was nothing more gratifying to me then to see what type of show I was able to help, and just the pure talent that everyone in the department possessed was amazing. If you do in fact get a chance to come out and see, it will definitely be worth your while!

And you're gonna hear me....

ROOOOAAARRRRR... Officially the most over played song as of late, but an extremely easy song to edit a video to... I created my first music video for BSN today!! Only problem I ran into was.. it was for Cross Country. Yes, cross country, meaning all of my footage was simply people running. If someone can tell me a creative way to edit a bunch of people running, let me know. But nevermind that, it still represented a major step in my work there at BSN and I was excited simply to work on it. Nate, a fellow editor, thought it was a great job and I myself am pretty happy that I was able to make a pretty decent video given the quality footage I had to use. I also continued my undefeated record going 4-0 overall against another of my co-workers beating him 21-12 :). Its funny to know I'm the big guy at the office when it comes to playing ping pong! I hope at some point I will be creating a video from that!

Learning every day

One of the great things I am finding at this internship is I can see myself noticeably evolving in my use of the Adobe Suite. To start, I now use Media Encoder much more even outside of BSN as I find it very useful for batches. I also have learned an awesome function of Photoshop which is droplets. It is very helpful to be able to simply drag a photo to a shortcut on your desktop and it just changes it into whatever you had set the droplet up for.  I am also much more efficient overall when working with Premiere or After Effects, and this is all due to the very tedious tasks that I have done on a daily basis. For example, the rendering Old Dominion Basketball player cards that require me to open a PSD, change the information on it, and then render it out as a jpeg. Another would be going through a premiere file and editing it to conform to a different size (16x9, 4x3, etc). I continue working every day and I seem to be pleasantly surprising my boss Scotty as he was amazed on Thursday that I had finished the work he had given me so quickly... That is what comes from having a lot of practice I guess.