Last September Art Spark Texas partnered with the AISD Go Project to begin offering Media Art and Technology classes to its students. At the helm was instructor Jerry Slayton delivering a course curriculum that included Photography, Graphic Design, Screen Printing, Promotional Video Design, even Web Design. Throughout the school year students explored the high seas of media production as well as the many devices necessary to complete each task. The class ultimately weathered all storms to create some truly inspiring projects.

The first major project was to update each student’s resume to the 21st century by creating a video resume. Students learned media production skills such as lighting, video and audio recording, and how to storyboard a resume for the screen. Then they were charged with the task of shooting and animating eight scenes that would appear in their resume and editing them together. “Through telling the story of their work students seemed to gain confidence in themselves and how they wanted to present themselves to a future employer”, said Slayton.

Amongst the many highlights were a series of promotional videos for a local business, Thunder Beast Craft Soda. Stephen, from Thunder Beast, hired the students to produce two videos for his company in exchange for a root beer brewing demonstration and free soda. “The project presented students with a new and interesting challenge, that of meeting the expectations of a client”, said Slayton. “Each class worked as a collective group to develop a story and visuals that fit the brand of Thunder Beast”. The resultant project showcased the students’ abilities in storyboarding, animation, and text design.

The course final project pushed all students to their maximum capacity as the students worked in groups to create websites. Groups were responsible for creating a hypothetical restaurant, its logo and branding, as well as its menu on their sites. The results may leave you asking, is this for real?

All totaled 30 students invested more than 1,200 hours refining their media arts skills during the class. “The students’ openness to learn new things each and everyday was the catalyst for all their remarkable achievements”, said Slayton.

Here’s a highlights reel of the various projects the students worked on this year:

 

This VSA program is provided in 2018-2019 under a contract with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.