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©Kendrick Disch
Kate Izor, Maine Media Workshop's Photo Program Manager, exhibits her work from "Blindsided", on Thursday, August 14th, at Elan Fine Arts in Rockport.
Kate Izor's "Blindsided"
©Kendrick Disch
Kate Izor, Photo Program Manager, exhibited her photography from "Blindsided", for one night only at Elan Fine Arts in Rockport on Thursday, Aug.14th.
Alumni Update: Kerry Long
Growing up in a family of artists, Kerry Long spent a lot of time being taken to museums and galleries. She liked most of it. Those visits plus a hand-me-down Minolta got her interested in photography. To learn more she came to Rockport one summer for a two-week Young Photographers’ workshop, taught by David Spear. She recalls it as a “great experience,” advancing her technique, improving her darkroom skills, and spending lots of time “accosting people” and photographing them and the surrounding area. Most important, it turned her vague interest into genuine love for photography.
Alumni Update: Rufus Texeira
Rufus Texeira considers himself lucky to have attended a high school with TV studio. Working there led him to seek a career in film and video production. He majored in the subject in college, but became frustrated with his studies and dropped out, taking a job at a local independent TV station. A co-worker who had attended the Workshop’s film work-study program told Texeira about it, and recommended that he go. He took the advice and came to Rockport for the seven-week class, taught by Jacqui Frost.
Alumni Update: Ryan Orilia
Ryan Orilio had been teaching communications for several years when he was assigned a new class on film and video production. To get the training he felt he needed, he spent two weeks at the Workshop in summer of 2007, taking introductory and advanced classes in “Film and Video Production for Teachers” from Bart Weiss. Besides teaching him film-making skills, Weiss’ classes helped Orilio design his syllabus and set reasonable expectations for his course.
Alumni Update: Peter Jones
Peter Jones has been enthralled by caves since he first saw one at age eleven. In college he began photographing as well as exploring them. “Caves are beautiful,” says Jones, “but dark,” so he devised ways of using artificial light to get the images he wanted.
Alumni Update: Karl Decker
In 1996 Karl Decker suggested that one of his high school students, cantankerous but talented, attend the summer program at the (then) Maine Photographic Workshops. In September she told him next year was his turn. So he went, attending a workshop on “Finding Your Visual Voice,” taught by Craig Stevens. The workshop, he says, changed his life.
Andy Bloxham Featured in Creative Quarterly, Upcoming Exhibitions
Andy Bloxham, photography TA at the Maine Media Workshops, is currently featured in the latest issue of Creative Quarterly. A portion of his "Beta" image series can be found, one of which won Silver for the publication. Creative Quarterly is published four times a year across the United States and Canada. It focuses on artwork created by people at the collegiate and professional level. Their online presence is http://cqjournal.com/
Andy is also currently participating in the "Blow-Up" group exhibition at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, MA. It was juried by Harvey Stein. The exhibition runs until August 23.
© Andy Bloxham
In September, Bloxham's solo exhibition, "Beta Fictions," will be on display at the SRO Photo Gallery at Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, TX. This body of work presents fictional photography and explores the narrative created out of imagination
Andy Bloxham is an MFA candidate at Louisiana Tech University. He has assisted in photography courses all summer at the Maine Media Workshops. He is currently assisting Stephen Johnson's "Digital Fine Art Printing" workshop. Next week he will be assisting Shelby Lee Adams in "Environmental Portraits."
Bloxham can be found online at http://www.andybloxham.com.
Animation Workshops Featured This Fall
The Workshops launches a new sequence of 3D animation workshops this October led by illustrator, animator, writer, and producer Dave Poole.
After over 30 years in the film education business, the time was ripe for Maine Media to integrate animation and special effects courses into the film program curriculum.
“In a list of the 50 top grossing films of all time, more than one in five is fully animated,” says Film Program Director, Mimi Edmunds, “This percentage continues to increase as does the need for training in these specialized fields.”
Poole’s workshops sequence begins with a one-week session of Introductory 3D Animation, providing an overview of the industry standard for 3D animation. Next is a workshop in 3D Modeling, for intermediate work in computer-generated 3D objects. The sequence continues with Rendering & Special FX, in which Poole takes students through the techniques of creating realistic effects. The most advanced class is Character Animation. All of these workshops incorporate the use of AutoDesk Maya. Each course can be taken independently or in partial or complete sequence.
Dave has written and produced for NBC and HBO and has won awards in film festivals and graphics competitions. He also built a real-time 3D character animation facility for Disney. He teaches at the Maine College of Art and the University of Maine, and has recently been applying his 3D graphics and character skills to an 
MFA degree program at the Art Institute of Boston. Working with digital photography, 3D graphics and Photoshop Dave’s created a variety of scenes that explore different ways to develop narrative scenarios. Says Poole, “By using directed photography and computer graphics I attempt to create scenarios that are both familiar and unbelievable at the same time.”
Workshops are also available for 2D animation, psychedelic animation, digital effects, and animated effects for the web.
Please visit the Not just for visual effects students, but also directors, producers, editors, post-production supervisors, and any one else who’s work in the film or television industries might touch on compositing visual effects will find this book highly informative and easy reading. It follows four years after Wright’s extremely popular Digital Compositing for Film and Video, the machine-side reference for thousands of working compositors today. The very first chapter is a fascinating survey of the key visual effects techniques done with compositing – set extension, match move, bluescreen compositing, bullet-time shots, morphs, and many, many more. The second chapter covers one of the most The rest of the book is devoted to a close (but not too close) look at the various aspects of digital compositing such as rotoscoping, wire removal, creating masks, and much more. The book concludes with chapters on coping with video, especially HD video, and how to work with film. This book is a reader friendly addition for anyone interested in visual effects compositing. Steve is in Rockport August 24 – September 6, leading a two-week sequence of Visual Effects Workshops: Introductory Visual FX Compositing (Aug 24 – 30), and Advanced Visual FX Compositing.Steve Wright's New Book: Digital Compositing "Lite"
At last, someone has finally published a book on visual effects compositing for the rest of us. Steve Wright, Workshops instructor and senior visual effects compositor with over 20 years of production experience has recently released his new introductory book Compositing Visual Effects, specifically written for newcomers to visual effects as well as the interested inquirer.
difficult subjects for a newcomer and one of the most neglected topics in other visual effects books – how digital images work. It even includes an all–important section on the long list of image file formats and when to use which one.Masters Week Special Film Presentations
Tuesday, August 12, at 8:30PM, Documentary Master Faculty, Kate Davis, presents a film she directed and produced, Pucker Up: The Fine Art of Whistling (film not rated), about the diverse group of whistling aficionados competing in the Louisburg, NC 31st International Whistling Competition.
Wednesday, August 13 at 8PM, Director of Cinematography Master, Russell Carpenter, hosts a screening of 21 (rated PG-13), which tells the fact-based story of six MIT students who train as expert blackjack card counters and take Vegas casinos for millions. Russell was DP on the film released this year.
These screenings are free and open to the public, so if you’ll be in the area that week, please join us!