Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

I spent six hours teaching yesterday and five hours today so, as you can imagine, my dogs are barkin! We all go through the same thing at the beginning of each semester. You have to get used to standing for three to six hours, navigate the room to keep everyone on task, and get used to lecturing for hours on end. It always takes about a week to get into back in the teaching groove. We had a small but devoted crowd. Ironically, mostly teenagers. They were more diligent about sitting through my lectures than some of my college classes have been.

We spent six hours on filmmaking yesterday and five hours on animation and gaming today. In spite of being quite tired by the end of the day, we ended up accomplishing a lot. I had scheduled Flash for the end of the day but had forgottent that I’d agreed to do that. Ultimately, former student Crista Alvey came by and we ended up talking about Flash websites and making buttons. I think it was worth everyone’s money and time. That’s always my primary concern. I never want people to feel like it was a waste of their resources.

Appreciation to attendees (some former students!) who were adaptable and willing audiences. And, appreciation to the event planners. Former student Amanda and sister Tiffiny put together a nice event. More attendees would have made me (and them) happy. It was the first year so perhaps it’s just the whole “freshman learning curve.”

I’ve got to give a big, big THANK YOU to Nick and Jeniece for all of their help taping the event. We were thinking folks might want to get a copy since each day was “Everything you want to know about indie filmmaking (or animation) in just a few hours.” Always count-on-able, Nick and Jeniece have been invaluable in current production projects. And, a thank you to Pamela Jo for her help yesterday in presenting and recording (not to mention providing phone tech support this morning to get the camera recording). As you can imagine, six hours of lecture is a healthy stretch of time so it’s nice to have someone there to take the pressure off and pick up the slack at the end of the day. Sincere, heartfelt thanks to the FZ Crew!