Yearly Archives: 2011

Jodie Foster Visits Art Center as Part of Film Department’s Distinguished Filmmakers Series

Dan Perri talks with Jodie Foster in the Ahmanson Auditorium. Photo: Chuck Spangler.

Actor-director-producer Jodie Foster visited a packed Ahmanson Auditorium earlier this afternoon for a discussion and Q&A with Film instructor Dan Perri as part of the Film Department’s Distinquished Filmmakers Series. Foster, who’s next starring in director Roman Polanski’s Carnage (trailer embedded below), shared with Art Center students her experiences as a director on the sets of Little Man Tate, Home for the Holidays and The Beaver, as well as her thoughts on filmmaking in general and a few of the great directors that she’s worked with.

Here are a few highlights from the event:

Foster on when she first became interested in directing: “When I was six years old I did a television show called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. One day, the director showed up and it was the other actor, Bill Bixby, and my mouth just hung open. That’s when I realized actors could be directors and I remember thinking that someday that’s what I wanted to do.”

On the importance of words: “I don’t write, but I love writing. I was a literature major and I’m all about words. That’s my connection. And that’s even my connection as an actor, strangely. I’m one of the few actors I know that connects with words first and images later. I don’t make action films, I make personal films, so I have to download my psyche onto the script before I even start shooting so that the film reflects my personal psychological evolution. If it doesn’t, then I’m not engaged.”

On working with producers: “I love the creative partnership between the producer and the director. In the world of studio movies, everybody has this idea that a producer is an antagonist. In the best of all possible worlds, the producer is your brother or sister. They’re your right hand person that goes through the entire process with you and that loves your child as much as you do. You’re there to create this thing together.”

On juggling producing and acting: “I prefer to direct and produce at the same time. Producing and acting is a bad idea. It makes for a very difficult relationship with the director. The director should never have to have a budget schedule conversation with another actor. The director should never have to have conversations about the costars with another actor. There are many conversations that shouldn’t happen between a director and an actor, and unfortunately when you’re producing a movie, you have to have those conversations.”

Continued after the jump.

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Students Preparing for “Idea to Pitch” this Sunday [UPDATE]

A group of Art Center students have spent the past 13 weeks preparing and rehearsing for this Sunday’s Idea to Pitch, a red carpet Hollywood-style event that marks the culmination of the Entertainment Design Department’s first course to integrate written story development with concept art.

Hosted by Idea to Pitch instructor Nick Pugh, the event will feature 11 upper-term students–eight from Entertainment Design, two from Illustration and one from Film–pitching original intellectual property created during the course to an invited audience of Hollywood studio heads, producers, talent agents and development executives, including individuals from Dreamworks, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Creative Artists Agency.

The concept behind the experimental Idea to Pitch course is to empower Entertainment Design students by showing them they can shift from being a work-for-hire concept artist to a content owner. How is this accomplished? By teaching them how to wed their original film treatments with dramatic concept art to effectively sell their ideas.

And what better way to teach this concept than to have the students actually pitch to real decision-makers in Hollywood?

“These students have been practicing their pitches every week since week one of this term,” said Pugh, who says the course eschewed traditional critiques and instead had each student revise and refine their pitch each week. “As an instructor, I’ve tried my very best to cultivate ideas that are original, unique and very sellable. I want the students to understand what it means to make something that has real value.”

“The goal of the course is to teach students how to own their intellectual property, how to pitch it and how to become an overall conceptualist,” added Tim Flattery, Chair of the Entertainment Design Department, while emphasizing that the real-world element at play at the event will make the proceeding all the more dramatic. “If somebody at this event is interested in optioning their story? Well, that’s all the better.”

Idea to Pitch takes place this Sunday, December 11 at noon. Creative individuals in the entertainment industry interested in attending can RSVP to maritza.herrera@artcenter.edu or 626.396.2464.

UPDATE 12/16/11:

Hollywood producers, writers, development executives and other invited individuals filled the LA Times Auditorium this past weekend for the inaugural Idea to Pitch, where they were treated to 11 full-length motion picture pitches that ranged from a sci-fi thriller to a children’s fantasy to to an absurdist action comedy. Feedback from the audience–which included individuals from RGH Entertainment, Bad Robot, Ziskin Productions, Digital Ranch, Paramount Pictures and Blacklight–was both positive and constructive, with one producer commenting that the pitches were substantially better than what more than 90% of professional writers come into his office to pitch. That comment drew both a laugh from the audience and a feigned outrage of one nearby writer who cried, “Hey, I’m sitting right here!”

Students received tips on everything from how to adjust their pitches to match specific budgets to how to keep their cool during a high-pressure presentation. One producer in the audience asked the students, “Out of curiosity, how many of you are so passionate and excited about your project that you want to turn it into a script?” To which every student in the class raised their hands.

“I’ve always pitched this class as a pipeline to real projects,” said instructor Nick Pugh, responding to the question. “This not a theoretical class. This class, with its focus on property creation and property ownership, is not just about getting a good job. It’s about heading out into the industry with a property that’s worth something.”

Turns out the student’s properties may already be worth something. According to Pugh, individuals invited to the event expressed interest in three of the projects, with one receiving multiple inquiries.

Celebrate the Holidays with the Media Design Program

Art Center’s Media Design Program is ringing in the season with Cheers, a student work-in-progress show featuring thesis projects, concept year individual projects and development year installations.

The show takes place next Friday, December 16, 4:30-6:30 p.m. in South Campus‘ Wind Tunnel Gallery. No RSVP is necessary; just be prepared to “see, eat, drink and be merry.”

Interested in learning more? Read previous stories on Art Center’s Media Design Program.

Hillside Campus Closed Due to Strong Winds (UPDATE: Reopening Friday at 6:00 a.m.)

Attention Art Center students, faculty and staff:

The City of Pasadena has issued a Wind Advisory and Red Flag Alert, cautioning individuals to stay home. The roads leading to Hillside Campus are inaccessible due to fallen trees and debris and the Hillside Campus is closed until further notice.

For additional information, visit the City of Pasadena’s website.

UPDATE: South Campus is not officially closed, but some roads are impassable and the City advises staying home until the wind situation improves.

UPDATE 2: Hillside Campus will reopen tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m., and South Campus will resume operations at 8:00 a.m. We will continue to monitor weather and safety conditions throughout the night and alert the Art Center community if the situation changes. We appreciate your understanding.

Keith Haring’s Mural a Constant Reminder of the Fight Against HIV/AIDS

Haring's mural at Art Center. Photo: Steven A. Heller / Art Center College of Design

Today is World AIDS Day, an opportunity for people across the globe to unite in the fight against HIV/AIDS and to remember those who have died from the epidemic.

In 1989, artist and social activist Keith Haring visited Art Center to paint an interior mural which still hangs at Hillside Campus.

Painted over the course of two days and created in conjunction with the second annual World AIDS Day (then called AIDS Awareness Day) and as part of the first ever Day Without Art, the mural stands as a permanent memorial to members of the art community who have died of AIDS and serves as a symbol of hope and compassion.

“When AIDS became a reality in terms of my life, it started becoming a subject in my paintings,” Haring was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article about the painting of the mural. “The more it affected my life the more it affected my work.”

Haring passed away two months later from AIDS-related complications.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the first reported case of AIDS in the United States. Since 1981 more than 25 million people globally have died from AIDS and more than 33 million individuals today are living with HIV/AIDS.

Want to get involved? Learn the basics of HIV/AIDS and take action!

Media Design Student Reaches Into Another Dimension

Media Design Program student Jayne Vidheecharoan working on her thesis project "Portals."

You’ve heard of Art Center students reaching across disciplines with their work. But how about reaching across space and time?

That’s what Media Design Program student Jayne Vidheecharoen has set out to do with Portals, her thesis project that combines chroma key compositing technology (aka “greenscreen”), Google Street Maps and a pair of “black magic boxes” to create a space where multiple users can interact with real and virtual objects across the Internet.

Vidheecharoen recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to “level up” her project, where she describes her inspiration for her project:

Lately, people have been getting pretty excited about the idea of interacting with computers by touching screens or gesturing in front of them. But I’ve been wondering, what if you could interact with them by getting under, inside, or behind the screen instead?

According to her project’s blog, Vidheecharoen is deep in the midst of writing the first draft of her thesis paper. We’ll give her some time to finish her paper, but you can be sure we’ll be reaching across space and time to follow up with her on this fascinating project.

“Get Physical” Lecture Now Available on AlwaysOn

Still from Rebeca Méndez' "Recurrence Relation 2" (2011)

Are you still kicking yourself for missing the Graphic Design Department’s 3×3 lecture Get Physical: New Media in Space this past September?

Then stop whatever you’re doing and visit Art Center’s AlwaysOn website, where the entire lecture–comprised of three presentations by media artist and designer Joachim Sauter, Art Center alumna and interdisciplinary artist Rebeca Méndez and contemporary media artist Christian Moeller–has just been been uploaded.

At Get Physical, Sauter, Moeller and Méndez (whose latest work, Quagmire, can currently be seen in Art Center’s WORLDS exhibition) explored ”post-virtual experiences,” those new interactions arising from the fusion of digital media within our built environment.

As might be expected, “post-virtual experiences” mean very different things to each of these three artists. For example, Méndez’ current work-in-progress Circumpolar has her following the Arctic Tern, a small seabird, as it migrates from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Mendez said that with this work she’s aiming not only to capture the bird’s behavior and habitat but to also document the invisible forces–the Sun, the Earth’s magnetism, the oceanic currents–that guide the Tern in its migration.

And the process of capturing nature is also an opportunity for her to reflect on the sublime fragility of life. ”I like spending time in the middle of the tundra, where I’m confronted with the realization that nothing out there wants me to live,” said Méndez of some of her recent works, including Recurrence Relation 2. “They told us going from the sailboat to the zodiac that if we fall in the ice, it’d be better to leave us in the water because we’d last longer than if they pulled us out. We’d last six minutes in the water, three minutes out.”

See all three presentations at Art Center’s AlwaysOn website.

Art Center Unveils New Degree Programs

In March of this year, Art Center President Lorne Buchman announced Create Change, a strategic plan that lays the groundwork for Art Center not only to retain its competitive edge, but to become the foremost art and design college of the 21st century.

Among several initiatives, the plan recognizes the need for Art Center to create new programs that anticipate the future trajectory of our practices, which in turn will complement and enhance our existing programs. Faculty and College leaders conducted research on emerging markets, evaluated student demand, business feasibility and curricular relevance of several proposed new programs. Three of those programs will launch in Fall 2012:

Interaction Design Imagery

Interaction Design (B.S.)
Whether designing a mobile app or a gestural interface for an exhibition, a new consumer electronics product or a rich informational website, Interaction Design students at Art Center learn to think deeply about the user’s experience, apply technology creatively and invent new approaches to interaction and design.
http://www.artcenter.edu/ixd

Environmental Design Imagery

Environmental Design (M.S.)
The new Graduate Program in Environmental Design considers the relationship between individuals, materials, space and emotion, challenging students to design spatial experiences from the first moment of encounter to the last moment of interaction. Tracks in Spatial Experience and Furniture and Fixture Design enable students to specialize and obtain advanced knowledge on theory and practice.
http://www.artcenter.edu/gradenvl

Transportation Design Imagery

Transportation Design (M.S.)
The new Graduate Transportation Design program will help change the thinking of the automotive industry and the wider field of transportation and personal mobility. Through two tracks—Vehicle Design and Transportation Systems—students will create inspired vehicles and transportation systems that will impact the world.
http://www.artcenter.edu/gradtrans

Graduate Media Design (M.F.A.) is also launching the new Media Design Matters track, which allows students to work at the intersection of social issues, media infrastructure and communication technology in a real-world context. The track is run in collaboration with Designmatters, Art Center’s social impact department.
http://artcenter.edu/mdp

Each of these new offerings will attract to Art Center a diverse new group of students who will learn to create and influence change in our world.

Applications are now being accepted for Fall; we encourage students, faculty and staff to refer those who are interested in learning more to the links provided here and to Admissions.

For Alumnus and Instructor Cory Grosser, “Sometimes Furniture is Too Small a Word”

Cory Grosser holding his latest project, a design object for kids called Turtle Turtle.

In the latest issue of Dot, Art Center’s newly reimagined flagship publication, we take a look at the College’s Environmental Design Department and get a sneak peek into the department’s upcoming graduate program. Among the many individuals we interviewed for that story was alumnus and Environmental Design instructor Cory Grosser ENVL PROD ’01, a product designer and brand strategist whose clients include Bentley Motors, MDF Italia, SpHaus, Ford Motor Company and Walt Disney Signature.

Grosser uses narratives to design compelling experiences, as perfectly illustrated in his latest project Turtle Turtle, a sculptural toy he created both for his daughter and for Humanscale’s Faces in the Wild art auction in London earlier this month. At this charity event, artists and designers donated works based on endangered animals with all proceeds benefiting the World Wildlife Fund. Encouraged by the initial response, Grosser recently launched an official Kickstarter campaign to bring the toy into production.

We’re pleased to bring you this extended interview with Grosser and encourage you to get the larger story of Art Center’s Environmental Design program by reading Designing from the Inside Out in the latest issue of Dot.

Dotted Line: What’s your educational background?

Cory Grosser: I have a degree in Architecture from the University of Buffalo and I was an Environmental Design major here at Art Center. I earned a B.S. in “Environmental Product Design,” which was a track they offered for a very short time within the Environmental Design Department. It was a track geared towards students who wanted to learn more about objects within a space. I think there’s only three of us that graduated from that track.

Dotted Line: Speaking of objects within a space, in addition to leading DesignStorms and corporate-sponsored projects, you teach several furniture studios for the Environmental Design Department . How do environmental designers go about designing a piece of furniture?

Grosser: Environmental designers know that the furniture inside of a space has tremendous implications for the way a space feels. If you walk into a totally empty room, it feels a certain way. Now fill the room with furniture. Depending on the type of furniture you place inside, the way the room looks, works and feels will be completely different. Sometimes “furniture” is too small a word. In our department we teach our students to think narratively. We like the objects our students design to tell stories and to engage people through those stories. Furniture is a good way for students to understand how their projects should tell stories, even if it’s a single object. So even if a student isn’t interested in designing furniture for a career, taking a furniture class once could still be beneficial for them.

The theme of Grosser's Piazza America at the 2010 Milan Furniture Faire was "Tell Me Your Dreams."

Dotted Line: Because of that narrative-based approach to tackling projects?

Grosser: That, but also in the furniture class we ask students to think a lot about who they are as a designer. What are they bringing to the table? The reality is that there’s a lot of furniture in the world, and every year there’s more and more. So we ask them to think about the thought processes behind making their furniture and how their work fits into the larger context of other work. All those lessons apply to projects beyond furniture.

Dotted Line: David Mocarski, the Chair of Environmental Design, says that environmental designers focus on the “total spatial experience.” Can you tell me what that means to you?

Grosser: That’s probably the best definition of “Environmental Design” that I’ve heard. The idea behind total spatial experience is that space is about scale. If architecture is the building, and interior architecture is what’s inside, then the total spatial experience can mean everything from the smallest object in the room to the building and even beyond the building. And since it’s experience-based, it’s all about how people feel in the space. Everything can affect the way you feel: lighting, graphics, signage, the materials or even the way the windows work. It’s a very holistic idea and it’s a very large umbrella for our students to explore, so the career options are quite vast.

Grosser's Bucket upholstered seating collection for SpHaus was inspired by seats of classic sports cars.

Dotted Line: What kind of changes to the field have you seen since you graduated?

Grosser: Beyond the obvious changes in technology, one of the biggest changes is that designers today have to be more strategic and savvy about what they’re designing. The expectations of the people using their products–whether you call them “consumers,” “clients” or “users”–are growing, and rightly so. So as teachers, we have to teach the students new strategies. Back when I was studying architecture, they referred to this field as “themed space design” or “themed architecture.” Nobody uses that terminology anymore because the field has turned into so much more. The ecosystem of narrative, brand and experience has become much more sophisticated.

Dotted Line: In a sense does the space become just one element of the overall brand?

Grosser: It goes back to that concept of total spatial experience. That can encompass everything from the packaging of the items within the space to what you’re seeing outside as you approach the building to your experience with the product or the website once you get home. Think of when you go to a restaurant. Of course the experience is about the food, but it’s also about the space, the menus, the silverware, how the waitstaff is dressed and what they say when they greet you. It’s a bit like conducting a symphony. We want to teach our students to become conductors, not just players of one instrument.

Beyond Luxury Concept by Cory Grosser for Bentley Motors.

For more about Art Center’s Environmental Design program, see the latest issue of Dot.