Archive for the 'media' Category

Tales From The Industry XX - Sporting Locations

Wow, doesn’t time fly when you’re having a busy semester! I meant to tell you about this early March shoot a while back, but got swamped and it fell off the desk. I recalled that I’ve been neglectful because I learned that the show in which some of this will be used will air on Tuesday night (9:00pm I think - “The Universe” on the History Channel). The episode discusses the end of the universe, as far as I know. The point is to discuss the various speculations that have been made about how the universe might end, and what current knowledge (such as the famous 1998 supernova observations showing that the universe’s expansion is accelerating) seems to suggest about which of those scenarios might be more likely. Of course, for the discussions to make sense, you need someone to talk about some of the basics, such as what it means for the universe (indeed, the whole of spacetime) to expand and collapse. Who you gonna call? history channel shoot - end of the universe
Ok. I’m one of many you can call. It was a new (to me) producer/writer, Savas Georgalis, who called this time, and we worked together on plans about how we might Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XX - Sporting Locations’

A University of Wonderful Things

I’ve come to realise that there are all sorts of really interesting people on the USC campus, involved in fascinating work and interesting projects of one sort or another. This is of course true for any university. However, I am still finding pleasant surprises and connections quite regularly. The last major such discovery for me was in the early Summer, when I found out that the excellent writer Aimee Bender (e.g. “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt”), whose work I knew about in a different context, is on the faculty here. (I mentioned this and described her contribution to one of the Categorically Not! events in this post.)

Now I’ve noticed that the hugely popular blog Boing Boing Cory Doctorow is here for the year as the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Research Chair, which will be co-hosted by the Viterbi School’s Integrated Media Systems Center and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Obviously I don’t read Boing Boing regularly enough or I would have noticed the increased flux of USC events and other things mentioned there in the last few weeks. Silly me.

Anyway, it’s nice to have another little blog carry the load of telling you a bit about what goes on at USC. So I can relax a little, right?

Here is an article about it on the Viterbi School’s site, from which I quote:

In his new role, announced this week by the Canadian Fulbright Commission, Doctorow will collaborate with USC faculty and students and deliver guest lectures to the wider community.

and further:

“We are excited by this opportunity to work with such a visionary as Cory Doctorow as we continue our research on experiential media for education, journalism and entertainment, ” said Adam Clayton Powell III, director of the Integrated Media Systems Center, an NSF-funded Engineering Research Center within the Viterbi School of Engineering.

Here’s an April post announcing it from Cory himself. There he mentions his connection with Bob Stein’s Voyager company. Who’s Bob, you ask? He and his work was another pleasant discovery I made last year, in the context of academic blogging. He’s Director of research at the Institute for the Future of the Book, at the Annenberg Center for Communication, and also part of the Interactive Media Division. I blogged about meeting him, and the bloggers meeting here and here. It’s a really small world after all.

So, beyond the exciting Visions and Voices events I told you about, there’ll be even more interesting events and talks on campus as a result, no doubt. Here’s one already. Excellent. If only I had more hours in the day…

-cvj