We’re deep into Hall of Fame now, but we’re definitely not slowing down. Day four completed another round of exciting panels, workshops, and meet & greets that gave students the chance to brush elbows with tons of industry rockstars. This week is a marathon, not a sprint, and we’ve been gearing up for the biggest blow-out party of the year: the induction ceremony and block party. Students attending the block party tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the outdoor stage in front of the Live Venue can look forward to free food, excellent prize giveaways, and plenty of other surprises throughout the evening. In the meantime, check out these highlights from earlier today.
- In Those Who Do, Teach: Why Mentoring and Education Are Important Throughout Your Career, 2015 Hall of Fame inductee Keith Guerrette encouraged students to mentor each other. “Teaching is always the best way to learn. You will get questions phrased in different ways that you may not have thought of before. That passion is contagious.”
- There were so many excellent moments during This Is Not A Panel About Women in the Entertainment Industry, it’s basically a whole blog post in itself. Behind the scenes, we were really excited to see a fairly even gender split in both attendance and online engagement. When one student asked whether she should act more like a man in order to be successful in the industry, Hall of Fame inductee Kim Alpert shut it down. “Don’t act,” she said. “Just be yourself.”
- With the undeniable Rising Tide of E-Sports, Founder and CEO of Gaming Inc. Alex Jebailey explained that in order for a game to be successful in the E-Sports realm, a game “…needs to have people playing it; it needs to be easy to access, spectate and compete in with short rounds.” Full Sail grad Grant Shonkwiler added, “From the development side you really want to make sure you have that tiered system in place where people can rise through the ranks; you have to have a way for people to grow through the sport to become that top five percent of people being watched.” If you are interested in getting involved in E-Sports, keep an eye out on Connect for the Full Sail E-Sports team tryouts.
- During Post-Production Tips, Hall of Famer Joey Morelli shared that you never really know when a project is finished. “The director is making the call on whether [a project] is finished or not. When they say ‘I love it!’ that’s when I know I’m done.”
- “I’m like a shark,” said the eminently quotable Kim Alpert. “I have to keep working or I die.” During Keep It Together: Organization is the Key to Productive Creativity, Kim and the other panelists provided tips for balancing workloads and keeping moving pieces in order. Apps like Harvest and Calendar.ly were especially popular suggestions for streamlining some of the more mundane processes that come with running a business.
- In Engineering a Business: The Modern Economics of Recording, panelists weighed the pros and cons of tying yourself to a brick and mortar studio. “Ultimately, this is the age of the engineer,” said panelist Jason Ross.
- The Concert Production Manager Challenges panel provided a packed room with lots of practical strategies for a number of headaches production managers encounter in their day to day. The big takeaway? Always be prepared! “You have to get ahead of every possible scenario,” said Hall of Famer Charity Lomax.
- Full Sail grad Phil Pallen was a wealth of information during Optimizing Your Personal Brand: Asset Review. “Position, build, and promote,” encouraged Phil. “Use visuals so that people know who you are. People think branding is just making something pretty and handing it off; branding is business.” He also noted that Twitter and LinkedIn are vital social profiles for students to create to assist in developing their own personal brand.
- Full Sail grad Elbert Perez and Hall of Famer Chance Glasco assisted students with their current projects in the Asset Management for Game Development workshop. “Asset management is everything from your code, to your art, to your sound; it’s how everything is stored in the server and how you access and communicate with your team,” said Elbert. “Having the discipline to put the right thing in the right place is important, because it will help you in the long run.”
- Check Your Tech: Starting Up and Throwing Down tackled some of the pitfalls that befall new businesses. Rather than get discouraged, panelist Danya Shea suggested start-ups “look for ways to fail and fail fast.”
- During We’ll Do It Live: What Live Sound Mixing Is and What It’s Not, Hall of Famer Tike Santos reminded students that sound is more than just a auditory experience. “So much of sound is tactile, especially when you’re experiencing it live,” he said. “We’ve all been to shows where we can feel it in our joints.”
- Our very own Stephanie Rizzo served as moderator for The Power of Storytelling panel, which delved into the mechanics of a good narrative. Each of the three panelists offered insight into various modes and methods of translating emotion to the viewer. Speaking to the dilemma of staying truthful in a moment versus capturing an emotional essence, Hall of Fame inductee Jeff Unay said, “I don’t give a sh*t about truth. All I care about is emotional honesty.”
- Elbert Perez and Chance Glasco joined forces again to give some insight into How AR/VR Will Change the World. “A lot of people are telecommuters, but now you can do that and be in the same office,” said Chance. “You can put anyone anywhere; you could literally walk over and talk to someone in India.” When asked about simulation sickness Elbert explained, “When you have a lot of jitter because of low frame rate, your audio and visual senses aren’t aligning properly. If you have the proper frame rate it shouldn’t be an issue.”
- During Reframe: How Digital Distribution is Changing Cinematography, Hall of Famer Tom Boyd noted some challenges facing the industry with these changes. “We have to adapt to creating content for much smaller screens,” Tom said. “The story is going to be king, though, and that’s what’s going to hopefully prevail.” Cinematographer James Neihouse added, “You have to grab your audience’s attention very quickly and hold it; you have to be different from all of the others.”
- When learning the art of Decoding Your Audience, President of Digital Brew Mike Cardwell recommended that students research previous projects when developing their own for Kickstarter. “Take a look at the ones who have been the most successful, and follow what they did.” Marketing Division Manager for Orlando Venues Kirk Wingerson agreed, “You need to determine what resonates with your audience.”
- Google’s Design Thinking Lab was an innovative, hands-on workshop that asked students to improve the general airport-goer’s experience. Four teams were given seven minutes to brainstorm and come up with 30 ideas, then vote on a favorite and proceed to the prototyping phase. One stand-out project was a zip-line that would have first-class flyers zoom across the airport to get to their destinations faster, and in a very fun way. Students used objects such as Play-Doh, popsicle sticks, and pipe cleaners to create their prototypes.
- Google Career Expeditions with Google Cardboard gave students an inside look to the day in the life of Hall of Famers Nathaniel Howe and Dylan Dresdow that was filmed prior to Hall of Fame. The Google Expedition experience is designed to give users a virtual look into the life of a professional so that they can better visualize themselves fulfilling the same position.
For more information head over to official Hall of Fame website or join the conversation using the hashtag “FullSailHOF” on social media.