On campus for iTunes all day Monday and Tuesday.

Here is the third PSA I did at work this week. If you missed the first & second you can find them here and here.

Here is the second PSA I did at work this week.

Things at work are at a stand still because of campus politics. To keep busy (since I literally had nothing to do) I made three PSA’s to try out a new HD camera and a green screen. These aren’t too fancy, it was more a matter of testing out the green screen to see how difficult it would be to use. I wrote/acted/co-edited these while my co-worker Chris handled the camera and the brunt of the editing (they actually look amazing in HD but YouTube can’t handle high rez).

I know “Bring Your Daughter To Work Day” was back in April, but Edit had to come with me to work yesterday for a good seven hours. Without any warning I found out that the windows in my apartment were being replaced (which took all freaking day). Since I didn’t want to leave her home in an apartment with strange workmen and no windows, I took her to campus with me. She actually had a blast, though it got annoying when I was trying to do stuff in Final Cut Pro and she kept laying down between me and the keyboard.

Stuck doing iTunes work all day today and tomorrow.

The iTunes U training session yesterday was weird. Mostly because the Apple trainer fit perfectly into that Mac user stereotype. He was a former GenX-er in his early thirties. He wore jeans and a ratty t-shirt with the apple logo. Every time we had even a second of down time he pulled out his iPhone and started typing away on it. Also he spent five minutes trying to explain to me why I should buy a Mac.

Grrr got that stupid Apple/iTunes training tomorrow. To “prep” us we were given a link to this video. BLAH!

This is what I spent 20 hours doing the past few days (plus meetings and campus-bureaucrat stuff). I had to make these bumpers to submit to the schools marketing department so they can approve of which one we will use when branding videos on iTunes.

Mondays and Tuesdays are my work days for iTunes U (though this week a rep from Apple is coming to train us on Apple/Code/Design junk so I have an 8 hour training session Thursday).

Just a few samples of some tests/things I did in Motion over the past week for work.

So my semi-boss at iTunes/American University quit to take some $100k salary job. As a result my part time 10-15 hour a week job has turned into a 40+ hour a week job just so that I can be trained in fancy stuff (like Motion, a blu ray disc recorder, a tapeless HD camera and other geeky stuff) before he leaves. Things should return to normal next week (his last day is Friday).

Working super-long shifts the next three days filming, digitizing, editing, and compressing. LAME.

Last week of classes and “Grand Theft Auto IV” comes out tonight at midnight!

Gotta film, digitize, edit, and compress the Provost Annual Address to the Faculty today. I’m guessing its about 12 hours of work so I’ll be stuck on campus till late tonight.

On campus all day.

At a film shoot all day. There is a “think green” or “green power” or some sort of eco-friendly event today and I have to cover it for work. The odd thing is that event is doing its best not to leave a “footprint” so they aren’t using a PA system or other technology, so it’s going to be a pain to get good sound.

On campus all day so no post. Also I picked up a part time job and this week is my first week so posts may be hit or miss. I’ve been hired as part of a small crew which will film and edit material for American University that will be down loadable through iTunes University. If you don’t know what that is then go onto iTunes and under the section where you can select “music, audiobooks, tv shows, movies” you’ll see iTunes U. I’ll be producing stuff to go there.

Want to meet President Bartlett… err I mean Martin Sheen? He’s speaking at American University on the 14^th to talk about camera politics versus real politics.

It’s a rainy spring day and I’m stuck on campus instead of getting to chill in bed like Edit.

It’s Friday so I’m on campus all day. But here is an adorable picture of Edit from back when she had to wear the post-surgery-cone.

Got a whole THREE hours of sleep last night. Edit still isn’t doing well and I’m finding it hard to do anything else but take care of her. Even when I try to get work done she cries and tries to get me to hold her. The pic above is her last week getting her head stuck in my printer. I had to rip the top of the printer off to get her out (it’s ok cause it was already broken, only the scanner worked). I’m hoping to go to class today but if she’s still doing bad I don’t want to leave her alone.

It’s Friday, but I’m not on campus. Instead I’m taking care of Edit who got spayed yesterday. I picked her up from the animal hospital about two hours ago and ever since she’s wanted me to hold her nonstop. Overall she seems ok, except that she 100 percent despises the cone that she has to wear. Updated On Sat @ 9:29am: She was a mess last night and I got less than an hour of sleep. She kept crying and would only stop when I held her. Then when I tried to sleep she kept bumping me in the face with the cone because she still wanted me to hold her. I really hope things aren’t like this for the next 10-14 days.

For an independent study, I’m doing the rough draft of a YA(young adult) Fantasy novel. The book, who’s working title is “Lotus: Fate’s Pawn,” is loosely based off the first screenplay I wrote when I was 18 (Man I was such a naive and noob writer back then). The above pictures, click to enlarge, are character sketches I had drawn five or six years ago when I was considering turning the screenplay into a comic. Currently I’m on chapter five of probably 50-some chapters and I’ve discovered that writing prose is much more time consuming that I thought it would be. As a result, I probably won’t update the blog till around next Tuesday.

It’s Monday, which means I’m on campus all day. So here is your weekly “Halo 3″ pic. It was taken on Standoff and that’s me falling through the map.

So just yesterday it was announced that Barack Obama would be speaking today at my school. Somehow I missed the announcement and had I known I would have seriously avoided campus today. There were people from the senate, the house, the mainstream press, JFK’s daughter and brother, and tons of secret service. That’s right. Secret Service.

I was on my way to class when I was stopped for “looking suspicious” though I have no idea what I was doing that was suspicious.  The agent asked to search my bag and I let him. While he was doing so I said “Can I just go? All I’m trying to do is to get to class. I don’t care about any of this politics-crap.” ((Let me pause for a second and explain The Patriot Act. The Act made it so that protesters can’t show up at political events and if they do show up they have to be registered and stand in a designated area.)) So apparently my apathy toward politics meant that I was a “protester” and as a result I wasn’t allowed to enter the building where my classes were being held (the building where my classes are connects to the building that Obama gave his speech in).

I hate politics. Plus after missing my first class I went home and a few hours later I went to go to my second class and my car didn’t start. Grrrrrr.

On campus all day so here is your weekly “Halo 3″ pic. The photo above was taken during a shotty/sniper match and the guy there had SIX snipers shoot at him all at the same time.

It’s Friday which means I’m on campus all day. So as usual, here is your weekly does of Edit. This is her back in December being mesmerized by her first snow. It actually snowed yesterday and just like a month ago she spent the WHOLE day staring out the window. At one point I even opened one of the smaller windows and she went nuts trying to catch the snowflakes before they melted.

Packing, driving, and heading home to the beach. Give me a day or two to get settled and then posting will resume! Though… I do have a question. Looking at all the post I did in the past year about 50% are TV related. However, with the strike I don’t have any TV stuff to post about. So what kind of posts would people like to see? Comment or email me at scottking@scottking.info

I’ve got exactly one week to do re-writes on two screenplays. One is a semi-big re-write the other is MAJOR. So the blog will probably be hit or miss until after the 14th. But then I’m done for the semester and will be updating like normal!

Last day of classes! Since I’m busy on campus, here is your weekly dose of Edit.

I’m at my Masters Screenwriting class… god dammit, I hate this class. Wanna know what I did last week in class? Then continue after the break (but be warned the following doodles are rated PG-13). (Read on …)

Holy crap. I thought we had three weeks left of class… but apparently this is the last week of classes and next week is finals week. That’s normally a good thing, except that I have full re-writes to do on two screenplays. CRAP ((p.s. can anyone name the movie that the screenshot above is taken from?))!

We had a conversation in my screenwriting class about adding race and ethnicity into scripts. I didn’t really participate because American University is a very “Socially Aware” school and I didn’t feel like arguing with people. However I did doodle the above-cartoon!

I have a professor offering extra credit points. All you have to do is name every movie that appears in the pic above (click it to enlarge). Although there are lots of movies there, its kinda weird how you can recognize a movie, even some of the really old ones, from just a single frame.

This is an artichoke. I mentioned one in a screenplay and a classmate didn’t know what it was. The basic gist is that you boil or steam them and then eat its heart, but let me see if I can get Sarah to do a post explaining nutritional stuff or some recipes.

It’s Friday so I’m on campus again all day. As a result… here is your weekly dose of Edit.  Right before I took the pics above I started to freak out because I couldn’t find Edit anywhere. I was terrified. I was calling her (which normally makes her come right me) but she wasn’t responding. Finally I heard a meek meow and went in the kitchen to see her yawning wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy up there!

My program at AU makes “Hollywood Reporter’s” list for top film schools: 

American University
School of Communication, Film & Media Arts Department
Tuition: $31,000
Unique advantages: Strong, socially active documentary studies; access to network news organizations; “Summer in L.A.” internship program

Ideal for: Politically active storytellers. Larry Kirkman, the dean for the School of Communication, touts AU’s blended curriculum, which gives equal emphasis to filmmaking, journalism and public communications. Kirkman also cites the school’s embrace of cutting-edge media like mobisodes, and ultimately, he says, “Hollywood or Washington, you use the same tools.”

A word from an alumna: Danielle Gelber, senior vp original programming at Showtime, says, “I found it to be the most personalized, hands-on program. You could go to school in the ivory tower in the morning and then drive down the street that afternoon and be field-producing stories for network news.”

On Thursday I pitched my thesis, which is to do an original graphic novel. The hardest part of the pitch was trying to convince the panel of professors that 1)comics aren’t just for kids and 2)they aren’t just superheroes. It went fairly well and I’m supposed to hear back next week on if I’m approved or not. To go with my verbal pitch I gave out a one sheet of paper that was laid out very pretty with boxes, graphs, and art. Of course if I post a jpeg of it then everything gets scrunched so here is just the info that was on my written pitch: (Read on …)

I have to pitch my thesis to a panel tomorrow. Then Thursdays and Fridays are my on-campus days so posting may be scattered or non-existent.