It’s been a very good week.  I am the 2012 winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award  - California Community College Association for Occupational Education.  It is a huge honor, and I have to thank the great people I work with and of course my students for making this possible!  I will be receiving the award in San Francisco in March.

Grammys – 2012 Was a truly magical year!  As an attendee I saw Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, and Adele.  I am such a fan of the Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, Adele, and Bruno Mars.  The live production at Staples was non stop greatness and the Pre Tel was the best ever.  Thank you NARAS!

Academy Awards 2012 – I will be working camera at a red carpet event at the Academy Awards.  Looking forward to all of the excitement and glamour!

I was fortunate this year to perform at NAMM 2012 with member of my band: Sable Cantus, Keith Wolzinger and Alan Levin at the MXL/Mogami booth.  Good times….

Final Cut X T3 Master Level Trainer

Great news – today I passed my T3 level Apple Final Cut X exam.  This is the master level required to teach the Apple syllabus.  I will be teaching Final Cut X at Golden West College in Spring 2012.  That course will also include learning the new Motion software, which has amazing motion graphics editing tools.

Private tutoring – I am also now available for private tutoring for both Final Cut 7 and Final Cut X.  If you are preparing for an exam or if you can not make the college course, a few hours of tutoring with me will get you up to speed or ready to pass an exam.  Just email me at rwolzinger@me.com

Fun in Final Cut X

I had the opportunity to film and edit the Huntington Beach Academy for the Performing Arts Show – “So You Think You Can Trash”. Gave me a chance to play with fun features in Final Cut X. First of all – I LOVE IT!!! The editing process was all about visual creativity. I loved being able to see previews of my effects before applying, having endless choices and previews of transitions, themes, effects, fun text and more. In this video I used a lot of speed changes, which are also fun, easy and add to my creative choices. I also used color and it was also easy and fun to use. I did notice that when moving things around in the magnetic timeline, it is super easy, but you need to pay attention to what is connected to that part of the storyline because it will move too if it is a connected clip. Overall I would stick with FCP X for it’s strength in visual editing, flexibility, creative choices, speed, and ease of import, archiving and saving. I use FCP 6 and 7 daily in the field, which are solid versions and will be needed for a time for many reasons including reediting older projects, multi-cam (coming in 2012 to FCP X), and some functions used in the broadcast industry. My advice- learn 7 and X – they are cousins – more similarities than many people realize – but 7 users will be able to hop on board and find the familiar and comforting features such as in, out, slip, slide, ripple, keyframes, audio waves, speed, color, snapping, etc. Final Cut X – fun! visual! fast! flexible! solid!!

Sarah Swain- Marine Biologist/Educator and Technology Media Coordinator at the Aquarium of the Pacific received a grant from the Roddenberry Foundation to add a high tech education facility at the Aquarium.  With this grant they built a broadcast studio with a teleconferencing system, tied to cameras around the facility.  “Our goal with the interactive video conferencing program is to bring our animal collection and programs to audiences that would not otherwise have access, nationally and internationally” says Sarah.

Sarah was seeking the help of media professionals in education to complete the project and make it a reality.  She found Renah Wolzinger and John Hanna from Golden West College.  Renah was brought on to edit the content for the shows and run the teleconference and broadcast equipment while working with the Marine Biologists.  John Hanna came on board to design the show layout and help the staff with many technical hurdles they were encountering with the new equipment.  Fortunately the aquarium was using much of the same editing and broadcast equipment as Golden West uses in New Media and Digital Media.

The first show was broadcast on October 25^th and was a complete success.  The students completed a squid dissection and it as an amazing use of technology in learning.  During the first show the Los Angeles Department of Education came to both sites to film a documentary about Virtual Field Trips, where this project will be featured.  “It is exciting to be able to use your skills to work for a great cause, and the aquarium is a fantastic place to make it happen.” explained Renah.

The aquarium will now expand its education beyond the walls of the facility and will be able to reach schools and educators around the world.  It is an exciting project for both the aquarium and the college, and one that many people are watching to see how this technology brings distance education to new heights.