catchin up

Hey gang. Just tryin to catch up on my blog, but whenever I start I have too much to say and have to be somewhere else. Here we go. After our success with the "movie quote marathon", I had the opportunity to reward the gruop with a field trip, which also get them out of their comfort zone of the club walls. Gabe, Carlos, Ms. Mays and I piled us and 9 kids in a van and took off for TCU. My friend Ryan is a senior there and is graduating with a major in radio, TV, and film. With his help we were able to get the kids to see a step further than just having fun with a digital camera in an afterschool activity.
We started with a tour of the radio station, 88.7 KTCU "the choice". We got to see the DJ booth, a small recording studio, and he let them each take home a cd the station was disposing of. Next, we moved on to a talk show/news broadcaste set. The kids got to stand behind the cameras and try on the camera headsets, or pretend to be talk show hosts. Next we moved on to see the prop room where the kids noticed the school used some of the same power tools they used in our first chain reaction cycle. Then we checked out the make up room and talked about the importance of costume and make-up. And finally, we checked out the sound booths, where the director sits and sound and music is mixed. That's where Ryan fielded some questions, and when Ms. Mays asked the kids, "If you wanted to be in showbiz, besides acting, what would you want to try to be?" we got a variety of answers we never would have recieved prior to the trip. The experience definatly made them grasp the idea that creative career options are waiting in the future if they put their minds to it.
Gotta go but next time I'll blog about our "improv dialog day" which heralded such works as "Hulk verses Vin Diesle" and "Bionce meets Little Mermaid", and the making and premier of "Leaders of Love".