After a long time away or only taking place in the digital space over Zoom, College of the Canyons Media Day welcomes back students to in-person seminars with film and television professionals.
Media Day is an event by the teachers and staff of the Media Entertainment Arts Department for students of not only the College of the Canyons but all of the local high schools and colleges. It was a yearly event put into the digital space during covid and then on a hiatus while everyone adjusted to teaching in a post-COVID world.
This year’s event, held on March 9, started at 10 am, but volunteers were there at 8 am to help set up and get the spaces and rooms ready for both the incoming students and presenters. With 160 students registered, the turnout was massive as they filled the halls and classrooms, looking to see which presenter aligned with their chosen pathway.
Presenters this year ranged from YouTube stars to local news anchors to people from behind the camera. Armen Fetlugian, who was a post supervisor on the first two seasons of Umbrella Academy and is now working on Kevin Costner’s new epic film, said: “It’s great to come back to events like this and give back to the students because I was given similar opportunities when in their positions.” Armen’s feelings were a common sentiment shared among every presenter, the ability to give back to future filmmakers like someone once did for them.
Another stand-out panel was the women in the film, which featured Jhone Y Lucas, the host of GenZone a GenZ-targeted political news commentary show, and Katie Aguilar, a Designer at Disney Plus. They spoke to a room full of women eager to hear the experiences and information they had to share. Jhone said, “It was empowering and great to see the representation at an industrial event like this, which doesn’t always have any female presence.”
The staff of the MEA department also set up interactive displays with equipment students attending the program would use daily and even gave tours through the state-of-the-art facility. Some of the stops on the tour included the control room, which is the head of anything that gets shot at the facility, and the newly built podcasting room with its comfortable layout with fancy film lights. Finally, the department’s server room is the future home of every student’s project as they are in the program.
After a successful Media in the books, the day was not over for the volunteers and staff of the MEA department. After all of the students and presenters had left, the staff was busy cleaning and packaging up the rooms so they would be ready for when the regularly scheduled class would be in the rooms Monday morning. It’s easy to see a successful event, but often, we forget the people who made sure it went off perfectly and cleaned up afterward.
If you want to know about the MEA program or College of the Canyons, visit canyons.edu for more information.
As a form of disclosure, I am an adjunct professor at the College of the Canyons and I am compensated for teaching there as well as for helping out with Media Day. This compensation did not influence the article’s writing or the words said in it, and all the statements made in this article are those of the authors and people quoted, not of the College.