wyclef at rolling stone

If you've been following my blog, you might remember that I mentioned meeting Wyclef Jean on the first day of my internship. That wouldn't be the last time I'd see him as he came in again for an acoustic session in November.

Watch his performance here as he busts into a freestyle out of a classic:

happy holidays!

If you know me at all, you know my favorite part of the Christmas season are the lights and decorations. So the other night, I rented the 7D and took some photos of the wonderful displays around New York (well mainly around Rockefeller Center since that's where the huge tree is). Enjoy!

Look closely and you'll see there's a proposal happening. While I was
taking the photo I didn't even notice until I heard everyone cheering
because I was trying to focus the lens on the tree.

online portfolio

For my final project in Interactive, I designed and built an online portfolio of my work using DreamWeaver. Thanks to my generous cousin, Martin, the site is actually live as he is hosting it for me temporarily. I will eventually have to setup my own space and domain to be more professional, but just don't quite have the funds to do so yet. What is currently up is what I submitted for my final, but I definitely want to continue to develop and tweak it. I'll be taking an intermediate Interactive course next semester so looking forward to that.

Side note: The form on the contact page doesn't actually work, since I'm waiting for my professor to set it up for me as he said he would.

So without further ado, voila!  This semester's labor of love.

semester wrap-up!

I just finished my third semester of grad school! Only one more to go...

The past 3 weeks have been quite stressful and busy but now I can relax and recap the last few weeks.

• I was given the opportunity to teach a set of two, two-part Intro to Final Cut Pro Workshops to Parsons MFA Fine Arts & Photography students. Yet another opportunity to lend and exercise my talents to the department I work for. The first class I taught was definitely nerve-wracking as it was my first time ever teaching a class...and to students who admit are not the most tech-savvy people no less. So that was definitely another challenge in itself. But the first section went well and I was able to adjust my lesson plan and better my way of explaining things with the second group.

• I completed my internship with the online media team at Rolling Stone. Funny thing is that on my last day I was able to go on-location for the first time since the summer and it was a fun shoot. So the internship was book-ended with  a good first day, meeting Wyclef, and ended with a delicious pork loin cooked by Deane Sheremet. Although, I completed my time with one team, I will be returning to Rolling Stone at the end of January for an internship with the web design team. And if you haven't checked rollingstone.com recently, go now. They unveiled their redesigned site and I helped with a lot of the backend migration of their media. I'll post more videos I helped with as they become available on the site.

•  I will post my final project from my Interactive class separately.

• Last week one of my professors was able to get our class free admission to a live streaming TEDWomen conference  at the Paley Center. Although when she spoke about it, we were all under the impression we would be attending the actual conference, but it was still pretty interesting and a nice little perk to being a Media Studies student.

• Book recommendations (both were used for a comparative analysis between Pixar & DreamWorks Animation): 
• The Pixar Touch, David Price (read parts of the book for research last semester and read more this semester. Very inspirational, and only made my love for Pixar even greater)
• The Men Who Would Be King, Natalie LaPorte (an inside take on the drama behind the story of DreamWorks, kinda felt like a gossip mag)

This is probably the most text-heavy post I've ever written for this blog so I'll leave it at that :)

Happy Holidays!

banner ad

For my interactive class I had to design and animate a banner ad with Flash. I made an ad for the same product I used in the simple website I created many weeks ago. And it works like an actual ad too..so click away!

video roundup 11.16.10

Get ready to pump those fists in the air!

Off the Cuff with Peter Travers: Mike "The Situation" Sorentino

The Situation Reveals Whose Abs He Wants

And some styling techniques: Get a Sleek A-List Blow Out

parsons fine arts mfa open studios

I'm actually getting a chance to put my design skills to use in the real world. I work in the Fine Arts department at Parsons so I was asked to help out with publicity materials for an upcoming event. Now, I can't take complete credit for the design because I wasn't the person who started it. I was asked to revise the first draft with a few requests. So I kept the original concept and made some adjustments to enhance the design and clean it up. I think the only thing I can take full credit for is the part with the names.

And so based on this poster, I was asked to create a postcard to match it.

interactive

So I haven't really posted anything from a course I'm taking this semester that focuses on interactive media/web design, but that's mainly because we haven't really done anything worth sharing. Most of the class is learning about the tools we'll need to build our final project. The main program we use is Dreamweaver. Although I've played around with Dreamweaver before, I've never really fully understood what I was doing, so this class is helping me use it correctly.

Even though we haven't done too many projects, I might as well share what I did for my first assignment last month. All we had to do is build a simple 3-page website showcasing a product. And while the screen shots below may present the site as something quite simple, but it was actually a lot harder to build than I would have imagined. And the problem with screen shots is that you can't see the interactive part of it! (Well besides being able to navigate from page to page the only other interactivity are the links with rollovers..haha)

video roundup 11.6.10

Just to reiterate, incase you haven't been following, the links in my "video roundups" are videos I have helped out with in one way or another during my internship.

RS Live: Secret Sisters

RS Live: Everest

N.E.R.D Perform Live, Talk about 'Nothing'

5 Reasons to Watch...90210

Atlanta's New Housewife: Kim Zolciak Has "No Talent"

And here are some I didn't have anything to do with but would see my bosses editing.

So if you love Conan, watch on! Behind the scenes at Conan O'Brien's RS Cover Shoot

Want to learn how to make a Waldorf, Old-fashioned, or a Manhattan?

video roundup 10.24.10

RS Live: Fran Healy

And, check out my cameo in At the Movies with Peter Travers: Paranormal Activity 2. Can you spot me?

latest videos from rs

RS Live: Pete Yorn

Off the Cuff w/Peter Travers: Chloe Grace Moretz

canon eos 7d

This year the school added a new piece of equipment of which we can rent--- Canon EOS 7D digital SLR cameras. I don't consider myself a serious photographer, but I like photography, and I've always wanted to play around with an SLR so I'm taking advantages of the available resources...besides I am paying tons of money to go to this school so I might as well. I've always loved taking night photos because I love how the lights shine against the dark background, but I've always had a simple point-and-shoot that doesn't always take the best night shots. So last week, I rented the Canon 7D and headed to Brooklyn Bridge Park and here are a few of the photos I took.

The Manhattan Bridge

Manhattan Skyline

Brooklyn Bridge

The two bridges together

There's a bunch more so take a look here

n.e.r.d and vs models

I know I'm a bit slow in posting, but here's an update on what I've been up to at my internship. Two weeks ago was a fun one at Wenner Media. One day I got to get out of the office to assist with  an interview with Pharrell! N.E.R.D made a special appearance to perform live in Times Square for a Honda event and we were there to cover it and talk about their new album.

Hangin' out with Pharrell backstage

And the next day, I experienced every straight man's fantasy...being in the presence of Victoria's Secret models (Adriana Lima, Erin Heatherton, Lily Aldridge, and Candace Swanepoel). The girls were actually really sweet and just as beautiful in person as they are on screen. The funny thing was as we were setting up for the shoot every male employee offered to help in any way as soon as they found out VS models would be in the building.

Here is the link to the video/article: http://www.usmagazine.com/stylebeauty/news/victorias-secret-models-the-naughtiest-things-we-eat-after-a-show-2010309

long overdue

School is back in session and it's been a long time since I've made a post. I haven't done a whole lot of projects for school yet, and I'm only taking one production course (Interactive aka Web Design) this semester.

But I do have some things I can share with regards to my internship. I basically help out in all aspects of production to post: setting up shoots, camera(wo)man, archiving, assistant editing, etc. Now I'm sure there are some rules as to me posting videos, but I'm not quite sure what they are exactly. So I'm just going to play it safe and link you to some videos I've helped out on in some way or another (that's harmless, right?).

Live at Rolling Stone: Chief: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/193554

Live at Rolling Stone: Matt Costa: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/193940

Off the Cuff with Peter Travers: Eli Roth: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/28426/193662

papa was a rolling stone

Well my papa wasn't but I am now a Rolling Stone intern. Starting now and through the fall semester I'm working with the online media department at Wenner Media, which also includes Us Weekly and Men's Journal. Today was my first day and at the end of it I got to meet Wyclef Jean as he stopped by to briefly discuss his recent decision to run for President of Haiti. Not a bad way to start off this internship!

Also, I know haven't posted in a long time and some people have asked about it, but I've just been on hiatus for summer break. School begins in 3 weeks so stay tuned for fall semester updates!

time-based final project

So this post is about a month late, but better late than never, right? For my final project for my time-based course we were free to do whatever we wanted with our professor's approval. Mine was a bit experimental for me in the way I produced it. I recorded the audio before recording any video. I wanted to record the music of subway musicians because I started noticing the same guys on my daily routes between Brooklyn and Manhattan. After recording a few musicians the visuals to my video came to mind and I just wanted to present New York City as it is --- a great metropolis with the constant hustle and bustle of people.

I've mentioned before my audio skills are not great. And I think the soundtrack could use a lot of work, but I guess that was part of the challenge. I didn't want to make it too easy for myself. I also ran into a few obstacles during production and therefore I didn't get all the shots I had planned to get, but I made do. Anyways, here is the finished product!


It's So Nice from leslie canoy on Vimeo.

photography

For my design class we were instructed to take photos all semester and treat/edit some them in Photoshop and present our best ones. Some of the photos have obvious treatments, but others are more subtle in that I may have just adjusted the contrast, the brightness, curves, etc.

Here is a collection of my faves:

sound editing/film scoring

This is an update to an existing video, created earlier in the semester. The assignment was to add a soundtrack to one of our silent videos.

Hibernation (with audio) from leslie canoy on Vimeo.

mic check, 1, 2, 3

I'm a little behind in posting some of my projects. One week left to go in the school year, so I've been extremely busy. I haven't shared any of my audio projects, so I will do that now. Although another reason I haven't been in a rush to post these is that audio is not one of my strengths. The second half of the semester for my time-based class focused on audio production using ProTools. And, I'm sorry to all my audiophiles, but I am not a fan of ProTools. Anyhoo, here is my remix of John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing."


[Vocals: Phil Henken]

I definitely don't have a future being a DJ..haha.

flashy

The last time I created something in Flash was when it was still part of Macromedia, so it was definitely a new challenge. My original concept for an animation was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated so here's a much simpler one..haha. I'll get the other one up eventually...although it won't be as cool as I thought it was going to be..haha.



[Picture is of Black's Beach/Cliffs in La Jolla. I've made tributes to NY and SF, so it was time for one to SD]

creating a brand identity, pt. 2

So here is our complete brand identity kit.

Logo Guidelines (designed by me)

Images found by Laura Cresthol and Rachel Flora

Business Materials designed by Erin Sullivan

Website Landing Page Animation designed by Natalie Sacco

Website designed by Rachel Flora

Publicity Materials designed by Laura Cresthol