Term 6, week 1

There's a lot going on in the screenwriting and film department this term. Here are some of the things we are working on this week.

The Last Draft, Volume 2: The Graphic design department was just "hired" to design the cover of our second volume of TLD. The Last Draft is a compilation of student screenplays written by students from the MTS Digital Media Screenwriting Department. The book is published by Lulu.com and will be available for purchase online. Copies of Volume 1 are still available at Lulu. Last year we earned over $500 in profits from TLD sales and donated it all to the .edu Film Festival.

Hit the Couch: We will air the newest episode of HTC on Monday, Jan 12th. Episode 3 is hosted by Andy Cincotta and Eric Cooper and includes a short "tech review, " a student video blog on our new president, and a pair video shorts from 2006 and 2007. The Video for TV class began production on Episode 5 on Friday. Episode 5 will feature videos from film/video students from Rosemount High School, Perpich Center for Arts Education, TV by Girls - all winners of "best of Fest" awards at last years film festival. Students will also interview Rick Hansen, co-director of .edu.

The intro to DMA students will shoot their first project on Tuesday of next week - a short commercial parody. With only two weeks left of the term - they are going to have to hustle!

Another of our groups of students is starting production on a promotional piece for Minneapolis Snow Emergency. The city agency is hosting a contest for informational videos aimed at getting cars off the street during snow emergencies. Some of the winners will be aired on television and the web. We were happy that a big snowfall was forecast on Friday and disappointed when it failed to materialize. Hopefully it will snow again soon.

A third group of video students has started production on a new video short. We began shooting Friday at the Tech Site campus. Watch for Hancia, Jazmine, Brentin, and the rest of the class for a week or so. And please, try to be quiet if you see them, our mics are sensitive!

I'm also proud to announce that one of our top students, Eric Cooper, has been accepted as an intern for Sound Unseen Film Festivals, LLC, the company that offices at the Com Site and is the business end of our .edu Film Festival. Eric will be assisting Rick Hansen in the planning and production of the festival. Eric's first task is to create a MySpace and a Facebook Page for the festival. We'll be searching for friends soon! In addition, Eric is now the student in charge of producing our student video blogs, so watch for him, armed with a camera, at our various campuses.

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