Where Are They Now-- Flashpoint Academy
July 6th, 2009
For the past eight years, the Chicago Innovation Awards have recognized and honored an incredibly diverse group of innovative products, services, and processes in the Chicago region. As executive director of the Awards, I can tell you first hand that our judging panel prides itself on selecting companies that are not only successful in the year they are honored, but those that will continue to be successful for years to come. The Chicago Innovation Awards thrives on these success stories. Honorees like TurboTap have used their unique technology to carve a significant niche for themselves in the marketplace. Honorees like Feedburner and Ovation Pharmaceuticals were acquired by market leaders for huge sums of money. Honorees like Threadless have been further recognized as "The Most Innovative Small Company in America."
Each of these stories are real wins for our entire community. Accordingly, this blog is a great opportunity to highlight not only the most up-to-date news about The Chicago Innovation Awards, LLC, but also to highlight our former honorees. Thus begins a new (and first) segment for us—“Where Are They Now?” Throughout the Chicago Innovation Awards season, our team will be reaching out to former honorees to see what they have been up to. Our inaugural update will be with one of my personal favorites, Flashpoint Academy, the brain child of two time Innovation Award winner: Howard Tullman and his partner Ric Landry.
Since last fall, Flashpoint Academy has welcomed a number of exciting guests, including Executive Producer of The Dark Knight, Michael Uslan; Composer/Singer/Songwriter, JD Souther; Director of Coraline, Henry Selick; Singer/Songwriter, Patti Smith and Director, Steven Sebring; Director of Photography for Wall-E, Danielle Feinberg; Director, Greg Kohs; and singer/songwriter, Joel Rafael. Their students really benefited from sharing in their expertise through engaging lectures and Q&A sessions, as well as live performances and interviews.
In addition to gaining valuable knowledge from the pros, students at Flashpoint have been keeping busy getting a first-hand taste of their future careers. Last fall, Flashpoint Film and Broadcast Students covered the opening and closing of the Chicago International Film Festival, interviewing Hollywood celebrities including Viggo Mortensen and Rachel Weisz. Film, Recording Arts, and Animation/VFX students collaborated with industry experts on a number of in-house projects as a part of their “Production-In-Action” curriculum, including the film, October Surprise, and the video game, Red Carpet Rescue. In April, Flashpoint students participated in the filming and recording a performance by the band The Most Dangerous Race at the new CBS stage. Student production teams have participated in Video Games Live, worked on a musical documentary of Footloose, and helped to create a music video for the band Sexy Heroes.
Many of Flashpoint’s student projects have received warm receptions in their respective industries. Game Development students Joshua Hernandez and Justin Moore recently celebrated the release of their game, PercussOne, on Xbox Live Community Games. A number of Flashpoint Academy Studios films have been selected for national and international festivals, including the South Beach International Animation Festival (el relojero and Marshy), The Connecticut Film Festival (el relojero), The Santa Fe Film Festival (The Collector), and the prestigious Palm Springs International Shortfest (The Intruder and el relojero).
Flashpoint Academy continues to look for opportunities to advance and recognize innovation within the digital media industry as well as within our student body. In April, Flashpoint Academy was honored to present a Golden Hugo to Backyard Productions at this year’s Hugo Television Awards.
Howard Tullman and the rest of the team at Flashpoint Academy are helping Chicago young people find their direction in life. What more could we ask of a great Chicago Innovation?