lynda.com for President

“We’re looking to create the future. We’re looking to change the world of education.”
Lynda Weinman

If you can’t talk politics on election day, when can you? Both President Obama and Mitt Romney (who I both photographed in the above pictures back in ’08) say that Iowa could be the swing state in deciding the next President of the United States of America, so I’m just doing my part to inform the public.

What about lynda.com for President?

Isn’t it time for the USA to have a URL for President? (And a female one at that.)

Look at the track record:

Job stimulation: The fact that lynda.com has had an employment growth of 188 percent over the last three years is impressive, but knowing that growth happened in a down economy is stunning.

Economy: Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin started what would become lynda.com with their own $20,000 investment, and without a single venture capitalist (or government bailout) the company has amassed one million subscribers who pay around $25 a month for their services. Again impressive, especially since lynda.com is online video tutorials.

Technology: lynda.com not only embraces technology, but helps others to harness the latest technology as well. (Plus since no one has to drive to class that makes them a green/eco-friendly company as well.) My illustrator friend Gary Kelley may not care for all the newfangled technology, but he at least appreciates how I can move his artwork around for multimedia presentations. And lynda.com is where I learned to do that via keyframing on Final Cut Pro.

Education: Saving the best for last—lynda.com has over 1,000 courses totaling over 40,000 hours of online education. There are no tests to take or essays to turn in. People are spending hours and hours online to simply learn. To better their skills.  To be more proficient at Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro X, Cinema 4D, and the like. People learn because they see a purpose in learning. In a world where we spend a lot of time arguing about how to fix public education, it’s worth looking at what lynda.com is doing right.

I did my first lynda.com tutorial in 2006 and have been learning from them ever since. A few years ago an editor friend of mine who was working on a project for EA Sports called me one night with a DVD authoring question and asked,”What’s the name of that place you’re always talking about?”—the answer lynda.com. And just a few weeks ago when I spoke to electronic media students at the University of Northern Iowa I told them about how taking advantage of lynda.com (which is free to them as UNI students) is key to their success.

Maybe in 2013 we’re not ready for a URL to be President. Perhaps whoever is elected President today can just name Lynda Weinman as the head of education. That’s a start. And just so you don’t think this is all fluff, take the time to listen to the hour-long talk Lynda gave on education earlier this year in Olympia, Washington at her Alma mater The Evergreen State College. Good stuff.

(A talk by the way I watched in entirety over the weekend and was surprised and thrilled to see at the 22:09 mark Lynda set up and showed a clip I actually shot and edited back in 2009 of Marc Prenksy giving a talk at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. It’s a talk I remember well. This digital world is a small world, huh?)

And to keep this in the film world, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival is presented by lynda.com. If you subscribe to lynda.com you will find they have seminars from past SBIFF available on producing, directing, and screenwriting.

P.S. And here’s a short video on how lynda.com got its start:

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #11 (Des Moines)

“To have the president of the United States join us in discussing the issues of our time is a special honor.”
University of Iowa President Sally Mason
Iowa City, Iowa
April 25, 2012

Iowa has been a popular state this week. First Lady Michelle Obama was here on Tuesday and President Obama was here yesterday. It appears from the interviews I was hired to shoot for a D.C. group on Tuesday and Wednesday in Des Moines, that these days Michelle is more popular than her husband.

From what I (a registered non-party voter) can gather from the African-American, the Romanian immigrant, the retired Marine, and the transgender college student we interviewed—all who voted for Obama in ’08—I think you might hear a lot about hope and change (and “It’s the economy stupid”) in the next presidential election. But those slogans will be coming from a different corner.

(It’s fun to be paid to be a fly on the wall. This should be should an interesting election year.)

Three 15 hour+ days have me running to keep up on the blog, so here are a couple of photos I took in passing during my shoots this week that I’ll include in my “Postcards from the Road” category. (Bonus points if anyone can tell me who the pro bowler is from our meal stop yesterday at the hipster-60s style High Life Lounge. “Isn’t it time you lived the High Life?”)

To do my job to help the economy I made it 3 for 1 postcard day.

P.S. On my midnight drive home last night I kept awake listening to Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works CD book. I’m was enjoying the content so much I could have just kept driving north on I-35 past Minneapolis, and even Duluth, and just gone all the way to Winnipeg. If you haven’t heard of the book, check out my post Bob Dylan’s Brain.

Scott W. Smith

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Acts of Gallantry—Medal of Honor

Army Staff Sergent Salvatore Giunta of Hiawatha, Iowa will be the first living member since the Vietnam war to receive the Medal of Honor. The 25-year-old now stationed in Italy will be honored for going above and beyond his call of duty in an ambush three years ago.

This is the White House report.:

Then-Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifle team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan on October 25, 2007.

When an insurgent force ambush split Specialist Giunta’s squad into two groups, he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover. Later, while engaging the enemy and attempting to link up with the rest of his squad, Specialist Giunta noticed two insurgents carrying away a fellow soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other, and provided medical aid to his wounded comrade while the rest of his squad caught up and provided security.  His courage and leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon’s ability defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American paratrooper from enemy hands.

That’s the kind of stuff that happens in movies, glad to know it happens in real life.

On Thursday, President Obama called Staff Sergent Giunta to inform him of being awarded the Medal of Honor.

Writer Sebastian Junger (The Perfect Storm) spent time in the same Korengal Valley, Afghanistan and has an upcoming book (War) and movie (Restrepo) about his experiences there. The movie won the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award for a documentary.

Scott W. Smith

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Why Do We Love Underdog Stories?

Photograph by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

“My bracket has Kansas winning the whole thing. Kansas is that big, fast, strong, deep, good, great, unbeatable.”
Gregg Dovel, CBSSports.com

President Obama was wrong. But he was not alone in picking the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA National Championship in men’s basketball this year. In case you don’t follow such things, Kansas lost yesterday to that little known team from right here in Cedar Falls, Iowa—The University of Northern Iowa (UNI).

One sports writer said the upset victory, “could go down as the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history.” Of course, that’s debatable. What is less debateable is this is the biggest victory in UNI’s history. This was the first time they have ever beaten a top ranked team. To do it in the NCAA Tournament before a national TV audience is all the sweeter.

The above photo of UNI player Ali Farokhmanesh celebrating says it all. It’s one frame that if it were the end of a movie the critics would be rolling their eyes calling it cliché. But movie audiences enjoy a good underdog story time after time. Why do we love underdog stories?

What is it about an underdog story that makes us feel so good? Perhaps it’s as simple as we all feel like underdogs. We can relate. Heck, I have a blog called Screenwriting from Iowa which might as well be called Screenwriting for Underdogs. But then again that would be redundant, wouldn’t it? (Tell me Joe “I’ve been in fights most of my life” Eszterhas hasn’t felt like an underdog his entire career?)

So screw the critics and keep writing underdog stories because the truth is cinematic history is full of great stories of underdog characters and underdog stories. From Rocky, Indiana Jones, and Norma Rae Webster to Hans Solo, Oskar Schindler, and Erin Brockovich they’re all underdogs that are greatly admired.

More recently, The Blind Side (based on the life of Michael Orr) found an audience to the tune of $250 million so far and landed Sandra Bullock her first Oscar. People still want to see Michael Orr stories. And, of course, an underdog doesn’t have to be an athlete.

Both James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic are the #1 & #2 box office champs—and both underdog stories.

What are some of your favorite underdog characters or stories?

P.S. The University of Northern Iowa is where Kurt Warner played college football before he became one of the greatest underdog stories in contemporary sports history. I should also give a shout out to the University of Iowa’s wrestling team who last night won the 2010 NCAA Division 1 wrestling championship. No underdogs there—it’s the third straight year they’ve won the championship and 23rd in school history.

Related post: Orphan Characters (Tip #31)

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #66 (John Steinbeck)

Though writer John Steinbeck has been dead for more than 40 years he’s been in the news a few times this year. Earlier in the year producer Brian Glazer announced he was going to remake East of Eden, last month the DVD was release of the six-hour production of East of Eden that first aired on ABC back in 1981 and starred an outstanding cast including Jane Seymour (in which she has said was “the best role of my career”), and also last month one of the 25 DVD movies President Obama gave UK Prime Minster Gordon Brown was Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.  

More than 15 of his stories have found their way to film and TV screens including Of Mice and Men back in 1939 and the quirky Cannery Row with Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. (Did you know that Hitchcock’s Lifeboat was based on a Steinbeck story? And that it was one of his three Oscar nominations?)

One of my favorite books is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, In Search of America. I was reading it again yesterday and stumbled upon this little gem:

“I have never passed an unshaded window without looking in, have never closed my ears to a conversation that was none of my business. I can justify or even dignify this by processing that in my trade I must know about people, but I suspect that I am simply curious.”
                                                                    John Steinbeck
                                                                    Travels with Charley 

But you probably want a quote from Steinbeck more in line with writing so here that is: “The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

 

 

Scott W. Smith

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