2011 Annual Student Open House

This past weekend was Hallmark's annual Student Open House....run by the students (with help and guidance from our instructors). I signed up to be a chairperson for the Commercial Studio. We were responsible for making sure all the bays were set up with final "hero" images set on the computers in each bay. Thankfully we had 14 people sign up to be on the Commercial Studio team, so that's 2 extra that didn't have bays. Another classmate - Megan - and I opted out of having bays so we could stand at the front and welcome people in, or stand in when other classmates were showing friends and family around.

We came up with the idea to have something at the entrance of the studio welcoming people in....so I got some letters from a teacher supply website and we hung some black seamless paper....and had all of the Commercial Studio people sign their names on the sign in chalk. We also gathered pictures from everyone - 1 self portrait and 3 of each person's favorite shots from commercial - and made it into a slideshow that looped the whole time.

A bunch of other things were going on as well. The portrait studio had 3 bays set up and were taking peoples' pictures, the DL (Design Lab) and IT (Imaging Theater) had all the monitors on with our work displayed on the screens. One of the other portrait studios displayed juried work (of which one of my pictures was a part). There was food upstairs, a slideshow of work in the auditorium on the massive screen with music playing, and then (probably my most favorite part), 3 pieces of each student's work was hung in mattes up and down the hallways. It was sooo neat to see everyone's work hung and looking great. People had business cards in the slots too, so if people wanted, they could take a business card. And then finally, in the classroom, students set up a live demo of stop-action shots...students thought up the idea, built the set, and organized how it would work. So the students put on the suits and other students would hurl paint onto them. The image would then appear on the projector to the right of frame (not included in the pic below).

I took just a few pictures of the day, so you could see some of what was going on throughout the day:

This is a classmate Gary walking though the hallway of our personal work hanging. I got this shot before everything started.


Here's my work hanging on the wall....if you can't identify it, mine are the ones in the middle (the bottom pic is the one of the little girl with the green background)


My photo - of my high-key female - which was selected to be in the juried print room.


The entrance to our Commercial Studio...we have "movie lights" shining on them, which made the silver letters glisten


The Commercial Studio at-a-glance...all the bays looked great. And you can see the powerpoint slideshow going on in the top right of the frame.


I mentioned that in the classroom they had a live demo going on....students dressed up in painter suits and had paint thrown at them


And although my family couldn't come up, I had a few friends come and see me. My friend M L - who I have dinner with every few weeks - stopped by to say hi and have a look around. Then my new friends Ron and Fran came by...they were just so impressed with everything they saw. They even came back for round #2 after picking up their grandsons from the movies.

It was a fun day and a lot of work. We had to do our own fundraising, including a spaghetti dinner, a St. Patty's Day lunch, a talent show, game night and then valentines and clover cards that could be sent to other students.

I think I can speak for all the students, though, and say we're glad to have it be over. Now we can concentrate on taking pictures for our Phase 4....I need to get hustling!!!!