I would love to tell you that I don’t know and just leave the magic in it. But since telling my sister at 7 Santa didn’t exist, I’ve always been one for iTruth, regardless of how disappointing it may be for others.

So here is my spoiler alert:

Alert! Alert! Spoiler Alert! (Said in a mono-tone voice kinda like Ben Stein’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

And with that said just click on THIS LINK to check out a video tutorial on how to compress for iPods and iTunes.

And don’t worry if you were reading too fast and blew right by THAT LINK you can always click on THIS ONE as well.

Hope to see you this summer!

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This blog post is an exercise in how to use a few words to describe videos posted by our film students that have attended film summer camps with Digital Media Academy. Our campers love to post their videos on YouTube, what words do they need to use to be found and viewed? If I were a teen with a dream to make an amazing film and change the world, where would I start? I’d probably search the internet for amazing films that are already changing the world, and work backward from there to learn where to go to learn how to make an amazing video! Digital Media Academy teaches a wide variety of courses, some of which teach kids to make amazing films at film summer camp.

As I was writing a pretty dry document for our instructors to use this year, the nuts and bolts of posting student videos to YouTube, I was trying to think of a great example of a “viral video” – the holy grail of “viral” and how to achieve that goal.  And I remembered that I had used a great video as and example in a “surprise and delight your customer” post…  shown here.  (And you can also check out another amazing viral video:  educate girls)

If I were the original creator of this video, and if I had made it during summer camp, I’d post it with tags like this:  “Digital Media Academy Summer Camp”, “Film Summer Camp”, “Make a Film”, “Teen Summer Camp” and so on.  To view it on the blog here, post it, click on “embed”, select the viewer color box you like, and select size 560 X 340, and paste it in the post in “Html” view.

Enjoy the video!

I’m going to illustrate a few things simultaneously here, so bear with me as it all weaves together with this one incredible viral film!

Things to Keep In Mind When Posting Summer Camp Videos to YouTube

• Categories – YouTube has several categories that are appropriate for summer camp videos – check out the categories by clicking on the “browse” tab next to the search box.
• Think about your video – if your video is the answer, what was the question?  If the question is “I want to watch something funny”, and your video is funny, consider placing it in the “Comedy” category.  If it’s a technical film about how to create something using a certain technology, consider “Education”, “HowTo”, “Science & Technology”, or “Gaming”.
• Post your video and select your tags.  Tags help people find the video.  If the film is made by the Digital Media Academy staff or a student, use “Digital Media Academy” as one of the tags.  If it’s made by kids at summer camps, or if this film would help kids looking for a film summer camp see what happens behind the scenes at film summer camp, use “film summer camp” as a tag.  If the camp is about “skateboard summer camp” or “academy for game design” use those words in the tags.  Whatever the title of the summer camp is, that would make a good tag.  Use all of the available tags.
• Write a brief description of the video, mentioning the name of the summer camp, the location of the summer camp, the age group, and what made it special.  Include a link to the page on the Digital Media Academy website that displays either the course name of the summer camp, or the location of the program.

I’d love to see all the videos made by students and staff this summer at Digital Media Academy! 

This film was made by Keith English, acclaimed artist, animator and instructor for the Digital Media Academy. He created the animations for this promo for the Sonoma International Film Festival.

Kids, post your videos, and leave a comment on this post.  Wouldn’t it be fun to have a contest for the funniest video?  Please let me know (especially!) if you post a video to the comedy category!

Check out Digital Media Academy’s videos on YouTube!     Have a blast at summer camp! 

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To reserve a computer or camera call, 866-656-3342.

Click the image below to enlarge and get more details.

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Or if you’re an experienced boarder and have made videos in the past, you’ll be able to kickflip your vids to an entirely new level. This year’s class at Stanford is taught by taught by SoCal’s visual fx and skateboarding master Nick Guth with UCSC grad and extreme sport junkie Travis Schalfman.

As with all our camps, you have the choice to get a taste of the college life by sleeping at Stanford’s campus each night or come for five action-filled days. Regardless, you’ll wrap the week with a dynamic vid … and there’s even a rumor the Skateworks Team will showcase their gravity-defying talents in an exclusive session for the class.

But if you’re not in the Bay Area this summer, there’s no need to despair. Digital Media Academy also offers the Skateboarding and Filmmaking Camp at UCLA, UCSD, George Washington University and Harvard, while SkateWorks’ brand-name boards, decks, trucks, wheels, and apparel are available for shipment across the country from their website.

Classes are filling up, be sure to register for our raffle before June 18 !

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Today I’m going to talk about a technique known as sampling. Sampling is taking bits and pieces of music or sounds from other songs and manipulating them to use in your own artistic endeavors. This is a popular technique used in Hip-Hop songs, but can also be used in any genre or audio situation. The tecnique I’m going to teach allows you to take an audio sample, cut it up, and assign it to different keys so you can play the slices on your MIDI keyboard. Something to be aware of; If you are using noticeable pieces of music you will have to obtain the rights to use that music from whomever owns the rights. This is referred to as “clearing” a sample. You might have to share a portion of your earnings or “royalties” from the song, pay for the rights to use it, or get written consent.

So lets begin.

I’m going to be showing you this technique in Logic Pro 9, an awesome DAW or Digital Audio Workstation from Apple. This is the primary software I’ll be teaching this summer in the “Come Together Music and Video Course” as well as the “Digital Audio and Music Production Course.”

To start you’ll have to launch Logic by clicking the icon in the Dock, the Application in finder, or a Logic Project file.

Then once the software is open you should create a new empty project and save it. For this exercise I’m going to call my project 4_DMP_Sampling.

Make sure all the boxes except include movie are checked when you save it. This way you’ll always have copies of all audio files associated with this project in your project folder.

Next you’ll have to get a piece of audio you want to sample from. For this exercise I’m going to use an apple loop. This is very cool because the Apple loops included in Logic can be cut up and sampled just like anything else, giving you thousands of options! You can also use songs from old vinyl records, CD’s, tapes, or anywhere really.

The loop I’m using is called “Sweet Strummer 02″ It is an Acoustic Guitar lick that I like and want to cut it up and play the different slices on my MIDI keyboard.

Locate the sample by going to your “Media Tab” then  click the “Loops Tab” Type in Sweet Strummer 02 in the search field and hit return. It will pop up below.

Then click the sample to preview it in the loop browser. Nice Huh!

After that click and drag it to an audio track in the arrange area.

Now double click the middle of the audio region to load it into the sample editor in the editing area.

This window allows you to do a multitude of thigs to audio files, but for now I want you to do the following:

Go to the audio file menu there and choose “Detect Transients” what this is going to do is create markers based on “peaks” or dynamically louder sounds in the file.

Now you’ll see little white lines or “markers” in the file. Logic computed where transients were and put markers there. What these represent are the durations of the sample to be mapped to each key. To understand more, double click on the audio file in between two markers and push play or the spacebar on your keyboard. You’ll notice that it only plays from one marker to the next. This is what will be heard when you press a key on your keyboard.

You can move those markers around to change what will be mapped to each key by simply mousing over them and dragging from left to right. You can also remove the makers by double clicking them. So go ahead an move the markers around and delete if you need to.

If you want to create new markers highlight the audio file where you want to create them and hit the plus sign at the top of the Sample Editor:

So once you’ve moved your markers, added and deleted them, now its time to map them to the keyboard.

Now close the sample editor by clicking its name in the edit area and highlight the audio region in the arrange. Then go up to the local “audio” menu and choose “convert regions to new sampler track”

You will then see this menu:

Make sure the Transient Markers bubble is selected. This means that its going to map the sample to the keys based on the markers we created. If you leave regions selected you’ll have the sample only on one key, and it will play the whole thing, not the slices.

Also the trigger note range is the keys you are going to map these to. So if C1 is selected on the left, this is where the first slice will be mapped and the rest will continue up to G8. Then hit ok.

You’ll now notice that a software instrument track was created and a region is created also. This region represents the sample as it is now. Delete that region.

If you record enable the software instrument track with the EXS24 sampler on it that was just created, you’ll be able to play the slices mapped out on your keyboard. So go ahead and play around until you find a pattern you like and record it.

So that’s it. Now you know how to slice, map, and play samples in Logic. Super fun and easy to do. It just might change your life.

To learn more techniques like the one I’ve described here sign up for one of the courses I’ll be teaching this summer listed below:

Come Together – Music and Video Production: http://bit.ly/9zHpIT

Digital Audio and Music Production: http://bit.ly/9kbqHD

Logic Pro 101 Course: http://bit.ly/cuvgmr

Hope to see you there!

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  What are the summer camps like?

By Ben Jaffe, Instructor

As a regular instructor for several companies around the San Francisco Bay Area, I believe it is important to ensure that every class I teach is different from the last. Even if I teach 5 consecutive classes on CSS, each class has a completely different set of students, each with different skill levels and interests. In many training centers, often classes really do end up exactly the same. Many instructors I have worked with simply plod along, following the curriculum word by word, line by line. No deviations, and no excitement. Of course, as a student you can ask questions and take advantage of their expertise in the field. But that experience doesn’t make for an interesting class. You may learn the topic, but it’s not fun.

It is certainly important to have guidelines and curriculum for a class so every class matches or exceeds a certain quality baseline. But what really brings a class to life is enthusiasm and flexibility. The instructor and the students both need to have fun, or it will be monotonous.

Digital Media Academy hires passionate and enthusiastic instructors for their classes. Just as importantly, DMA also allows their instructors quite a bit of flexibility with the course curriculum. Some of the best classes I have ever taught were classes where we went off the beaten path, attacking a project that nobody in the room had ever tried before. Last year, I taught Flash Actionscript Class for Teens at Stanford. After a few days, we voted on a game to work on together. We ended up making a playable version of Connect Four in Flash. Not only was it the first time any of my students had programmed Connect Four, it was the first time I had too!

Because Digital Media Academy hires only the best and most competent staff and instructors, we can go places with our classes that other companies cannot. Having taught with many computer training companies over many years, I truly do feel Digital Media Academy has something very unique. When you take a class with DMA, you don’t leave with a curriculum mindlessly stuffed into your brain. You leave with knowledge, confidence and a fulfilling experience.

I hope to see you this summer at Digital Media Academy!

If you’ve had a fulfilling experience at DMA in previous summers, feel free to join the conversation and leave a comment below!  Read one of our summer camp success stories!

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That’s why it’d be a shame if you missed your chance to win FREE tuition for a Digital Media Summer Camp Course of your selection.

There is only 1 week left in the iLike. iWin. iLearn. iPad. Sweepstakes presented by Digital Media Academy. We have already given away 4 FREE iPads! But what is even better is what is still to come. Next Tuesday, June 1st, we will be announcing the winner of a prize worth more than all 4 of those iPads combined!

Do you want to learn how to become an animator with Maya? Maybe you want to produce music using Logic Pro or make your own videos with Final Cut Pro. Maybe you want to direct music videos using both?

Whatever your dreams and aspirations are in digital media, Digital Media Academy has a summer camp that can help you get on your way. All you have to do is head on over to our Facebook page and sign up for the sweepstakes and you could win your FREE ride!

Hurry the sweepstakes ends in a week!

SIGN UP HERE!!!!!!!!

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 Technology and Sunshine Meet at San Diego Summer Camp

 By Arash Afshar

Imagine exploring cutting edge media technologies such as robotics, 3D modeling, animation, video production, game design, graphics and more from top rated instructors in beautiful San Diego. The Digital Media Academy Summer Camp at UCSD offers students this in a unique, one of a kind learning experience!

Through the UCSD Summer Camp, your child will not only have an educational summer, but also get to explore the outdoors in very non-traditional ways.

Skateboarding and Filmmaking is a weeklong summer camp at UCSD which combines an interest in film making along with the excitement of skateboarding!  Teens enrolled in this camp will have the opportunity to receive skateboarding instruction from experts, and film all the action.  Students will also learn editing and special effects skills when they take their skateboarding video into a state of the art classroom studio for post production.

For teens and kids who would rather spend time on the beautiful San Diego beaches, the Digital Media Academy offers a Surfing and Filmmaking summer camp at UCSD.  In partnership with La Jolla Surf Camp, parent company of Surf Divas, students will have the opportunity to improve their surfing skills while filming and editing their own video!

These are only two of the many fun opportunities students have at the UCSD summer camp.  For more information on these programs and more visit: summer camp information.

There are many reasons why year after year, students return to the Digital Media Academy summer camps. Fun classes, experienced professors, and the chance to make life-long friends are just a few of them!  Register for summer camp today and see for yourself!

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 By James Matthew Taylor

The breadth and scope of games today have expanded far beyond the early efforts in the medium. Where previous games once tracked only a few actors and a single play-screen, modern games immerse players in sprawling worlds filled with talking people and objects to interact with.

Simple Graphics for Vintage Video Games

The sheer size of these worlds has dramatically increased the need for artists to create them. When the console cycle shifted to the Playstation 2 in the year 2000, the average art team for a game was maybe five to ten people. By the time the next-generation consoles arrived, art teams had grown tenfold. And as consumers become more demanding, requirements for art are sure to grow.

Modern titles are built around the idea of living, breathing worlds. The Grand Theft Auto series places players in elaborate urban environments, with city blocks that stretch for miles. Fallout 3 creates a huge, post-apocalyptic world to explore. The newly released Red Dead Redemption gives the player the chance to experience the Wild West. In every case, the user is able to experience a world completely apart from everyday reality.

Experience the Wild West with Red Dead Redemption

Certainly, huge game worlds are being built, and artists are needed to create them! But these virtual worlds will almost certainly expand to fields outside of gaming. Building worlds for industrial simulations, business telepresence, medical imaging, even virtual tourism, are all possibilities. In each case, the technology will rely heavily on what has been pioneered in the gaming sector. And there will be a huge need to create all the art content for such elaborate worlds.

Digital Media Academy’s 3D Game Creation – Level Design course is an amazing introduction to just this kind of art! The students will use 3D art creation tools (Maya) and level creation tools (Unreal 3) to create their own custom level that they can play in-game. This mirrors the professional development pipeline I work with in the game industry. Students will come away with the class with the skills to build anything they want inside a game engine – which is a first great step towards a career in the budding realm of virtual tourism.

Maya and Unreal 3 Game Design

Why not jump start your career in game design with a two week Academy for Game Design Summer Camp?  If you are a serious gamer and interested in a career in game art and design, don’t miss this incredible opportunity!  Over two exciting and intense weeks, you will build a state-of-the-art 3D environment and one or more stunning characters, all while using industry standard tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Zbrush and the Unreal 3 Game engine!

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