KUOZ - Another Great Year Ahead!

Students met this afternoon for the organizational meeting for KUOZ Channel 6 and KUOZ 110.5. Here's a report from Susan Edens, Director of Broadcasting:

We had a great meeting this afternoon, led by Corey Snyder. It was kind of an “all call” for students interested in working on radio or television production projects this fall and we had ten new students there as well as several veterans.

Corey talked to them about all of the planned events we have coming up, including high school football, the WAIS Lecture series, his sports show, radio opportunities, and opportunities for them to create their own programs. He emphasized the importance of gathering material leading up to our election night coverage, saying,  “I want us to get together with SCM and Poli Sci majors to put together something ongoing, leading up to the election.”

Corey also pointed out the opportunities available to freshman or new students: “We want to use these show concepts as a way of introducing you to the program and the equipment.”

Here's a short clip from the meeting:

As Susan said, it's going to be a great year!

New Year, New Faces

Some of the top events for orientation today were the "Professional Preparation" meetings, in which students can check out their interest in a particular field of study. We had 15 or so new freshmen at the meeting for Communication, along with several current students. The session gives students an overview of the two majors, as well as a glimpse into the type of activities they may have the opportunity to be part of - "paraprofessional" activities, as Susan Edens called them.

Welcome to our new students! Here's hoping we all have a great year!  

The Customer is (Almost) Always Right

(This is the first of a series of guest posts written by students in the PR Writing and Design class this semester. Today's guest is Zach Doty, a senior Marketing and Strategic Communication major who will be graduating in about three weeks. Zach is pursuing leads on three positions with different advertising agencies. For a look at his internships and other experiences, visit his portfolio site at zldoty.com .) 

Recently, I approached a local small business for an opportunity to redesign their website. During the site building process, the client and I had a few instances where we disagreed on design of the site. In this experience, I learned firsthand a lesson taught at my advertising agency internships. The customer is almost always right. Allow me to explain myself before blatantly going against a customer service adage.

As a marketing or communications professional, you’re often faced with a challenge the client cannot do, or is unable to do themselves. For example, a local small business needs a new website. However, they do not have the expertise to make a new one. Keep that in mind as a professional. When working with a client, make sure it is a partnership, not a benevolent dictatorship (this goes both ways).

If the client doesn’t know about what they’re getting themselves into, educate them. If you don’t understand what it’s like to run their business, dive in. Like communicating to a consumer, the client relationship should be a level playing field based on mutual transactions. In a roundabout way, if a client asks for falling snowflakes on their website, politely say no. Just make sure to explain why and drive deeper into what they want out of a website.

To sum up, the customer is not always right. However, always make sure the client’s needs are addressed, but in the most suitable manner.

We're Back!

I'm sure it seems pretty ironic that someone who teaches about social media and effective communication hasn't posted anything since October. It's not that I haven't had anything to say - quite the opposite! We've had a lot of exciting things going on in the Communication department since October. Here are a few highlights:

• The RTV program purchased a TriCaster 300, a portable 13-channel HD live production system which makes it possible to stream video on the web. The TriCaster arrived on campus at the end of January, and its first job was a simulcast of an interview with the gospel blues band Brick Fields live on air and as an internet video stream through UStream.
• Dr. John Dailey was hired as Assistant Professor of Radio/Television/Video. Dr. Dailey has taught in the multimedia program at Ball State University in Indiana and brings expertise in web design for television to our program. He will begin teaching at Ozarks in the fall.
• Two Strategic Communication students, Hidenobu Kameya and Naima Lopez, were part of the presentation team that won the regional competition for the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) organization in March. The team will now go to the national competition in May.
• Communication students and faculty joined together for a Mardi Gras-style luncheon on Assessment Day in February. Faculty members provided the food, including a pair of king cakes, complete with plastic baby.

There's more excitement to come in the weeks ahead. Of course, everyone has a lot of projects to finish between now and finals week. Plans are in the works for a celebration/awards dinner April 24. Graduation is May 12, and we have our largest group of Strategic Communication graduates ever. Then Monday, May 14, summer school begins, with three unique offerings from the Communication department.

I promise to do a better job keeping everyone up to date with what's going on!

Here's a picture of the virgin run of the Tricaster:

And a shot from our Mardi Gras luncheon:

We'll be back later in the week with a series of guest posts written by students in the PR Writing and Design class - look for them!

Photoshop Student Gallery

Our intensive one-hour Introduction to Photoshop class wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, and I've been meaning to post some of the wonderful images students submitted for their final portfolios. The assignment was to create six original images using the techniques they learned in class. They also had to write a brief legend about how they created the image.

I asked the students to submit their favorite photo to be published on the blog. Here are the ones I got, along with the legend for each one.

"Creek" by Brittany Brantley
I used the lasso tool to select the rocks and the creek, I then used a photo effect to brighten them and make them stand out.

"SKATE" by Alex Chandler
I...placed the portrait on top of the stars.  At which point, I erased the background and made the stars appear behind us.  Then I added a text box to the bottom of the photo with a 60pt font with old English text mt, at a T1, and colored it white.  I placed it in the bottom left corner and then cropped then entire picture.

"Freedom" by Monica Linares
I combined two separate pictures of the same landscape by using Auto-Align Layers. Then, I used Auto-Blend Layers to even out the colors of both pictures. After that, I cropped and scaled the pictures to get rid of some edges and make one rectangular image.  I then proceeded to use the Horizontal Type Mask Tool to write the word “freedom.” Once I had the word selected, I inversed the selection and changed the hue/saturation of the picture to make the letters stand out as the central aspect of the image. 

"Hope" by Michelle Loving
(I don't actually have the legend because it was part of the portfolio book Michelle turned in and I gave it back to her before I copied down the legend. My bad.)

I always enjoy seeing the creativity the students combine with their newly-learned skills!

Ozarks Students to Take Part in Offshoot Film Festival

The following is a press release written by Max Hilgendorf, a sophomore Strategic Communication major, for an assignment in News Writing class. Since this is an actual event Ozarks students will be participating in and since one of our alumni (Trent Jones) is working with the festival, I asked Max if we could publish his release.

FAYETTEVILLE FILM FEST

CLARKSVILLE, AR – An upcoming Fayetteville film festival (Oct. 27-30) will provide a great atmosphere for filmmakers and enthusiasts alike with educational opportunities and film screenings that include several Ozarks productions.

The four-day Offshoot Film Festival will kick off on Friday, Oct. 27 and run through Monday, Oct. 30 in the Fayetteville Square area downtown.  The film festival will feature a wide variety of films from seven different categories: Documentaries, Narrative Features, Animation, Short, Student, Low budget/low tech, and films with an Arkansas Connection.  This year, the film festival will include two original films created by University of the Ozarks RTV students.  Led by Ozarks RTV professor Susan Edens, the students entered two films in two separate categories: a documentary called “Hello St. Louis?” and a short film called “Unwanted.”  Edens said she is encouraging her students to attend and submit films at Offshoot because she said it is a close and cheap way for them to meet other film people and to truly experience the real world of the film industry. 

The festival will include educational opportunities with film industry professionals and a post screening question/answer session with several attending filmmakers.  Both Edens and Trent Jones, an Ozarks RTV graduate and now a media teacher at Har-Bar High and an organizer for the film fest, said the Offshoot Film Fest puts an emphasis on the educational arts and is a great opportunity to grow a solid film student base in Arkansas and the surrounding states.

Also, every night the festival will host an official Offshoot After-Party around Dickson Street.    

Jones, who is now a media teacher at Har-Bar High, said there are many ways to get involved with the festival; people can volunteer to work at the fest for a day or even submit a film to enter one of the categories.

The festival is presented by the Seedling Film Association, an organization that strives to help establish and serve the growing film community in the Northwest Arkansas area. 

As Jones says, the Fayetteville area is the perfect setting for such a festival not only because of its enthusiasm for film and the arts, but also because of its market potential.  Fayetteville is home to the University of Arkansas and next to the headquarters of the largest retailer in the world, Wal-Mart, which is also the largest distributor of DVD’s. 

Jones said this up-and-coming festival will continue to help grow and influence the area’s film industry and that through social media and word of mouth the festival’s reach will further expand to allow more and more people to gain the knowledge and fuel the passion of film.  The Offshoot Film Festival invites its attendees “to be a part of a festival where [their] treatment will be memorable and [their] influence as an independent filmmaker will be esteemed.

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Vlog #1 - Behind the Scenes of Ozarks Weekly

This semester the Channel 6 crew is working on a program called Ozarks Weekly, which features campus stories, weather, and sports.  Producer Malisa Mat Sani put together an inside look into the hectic days leading up to the first production last week.

Tonight was the second production for Ozarks Weekly, which airs Thursday nights at 7:00. You can also check out the show on YouTube.  Malisa plans to keep us in the know by continuing the vlog series throughout the semester. Check out Ozarks Weekly to keep up with what's going on at U of O.