Teens Thrive at High-Tech Workshop
Future filmmakers, animators, graphic designers and other hungry communications wannabes shot video cameras, hunched over computers and worked furiously in editing rooms.
The 50 area high schoolers were participating in the communications segment of the four-day Cyber Summer ’97 event that ended Thursday at Moorpark College. The workshop brings representatives of area companies to the college, where they give students hands-on experience in the high-tech world.
In the communication segment, about a dozen teens crammed into a television editing room, learning how to create a 10-minute magazine-style show from hours of tape. Moorpark College television professor and stage director Les Wieder reminded the class to keep the “passion” alive, even in the post-production phase.
In the animation room, another group of youths gazed into computer screens, trying to figure out how to make a still shot spring to life.
“We’re really learning how to think creatively,” said 13-year-old Erika Saldivar, a Moorpark High School freshman who said she wants to be a news anchorwoman one day. “It’s going to help me in my career.”
That’s exactly the point, said Vicki Bortolussi, Moorpark College dean of institutional advancement and Cyber Summer co-coordinator. She said she wanted to combine participants’ appetites for the communications world with real-life, hands-on work led by local industry leaders. Many of the workshop instructors come from special-effects, World Wide Web-design or graphic-design companies in Ventura County.
“We want to stay up to date by involving professionals,” Bortolussi said.
The students, most of them juniors, paid $95 for the four days. The staff and speakers donated their time. Bortolussi said she hoped to find funding from grants and industry contributions to offer scholarships and keep the program going.
This is the first time such a workshop has been held at the college, because the world of communications is “so new and dynamic,” Bortolussi said. Being so close to the entertainment industry is a big part of the communications push at Moorpark College, she said, adding that this is the first year students were able to earn a broad communications degree.
By inviting speakers from Spectra F/X in Moorpark and Dream Quest Inc. in Simi Valley, teens get a close look at what is in their backyard and what lies ahead of them, Bortolussi said. College officials hope to forge a more permanent partnership with these and other companies and thereby generate more jobs for students.
