The EMB Program

The EMB program has been very fortunate to continue to grow over the five years I've been at NKU. We currently have the largest program in Cincinnati USA (and there are six other media programs, two year and four year, in the region) with the coolest editing lab around. Our program focuses upon the creative elements in media - writing, shooting, acting, recording, editing, color and sound. As probably the strongest proponent of the Communication Department's "Academic and Applied" mantra, EMB encompasses radio and audio recording, live multicamera television news and sports, digital cinema narrative and documentary moviemaking, writing, acting, producing and more. A career in media creation has to be more than just a job - it is simply too much work for too little money.

The program is probably best outlined on the official EMB site. There you'll see a featured video created by EMB students that won last year's College Weekend Movie Festival and can download an Acrobat file of the program's options. We offer 'guided choices' in our course offerings and two tracks: electronic media and broadcast journalism. The EMB major also requires a minor - and all that's explained on the official site.

As for gear, we have the aforementioned Lab. Totally rocks. In addition to The Lab we have a smaller editing room with seven stand-alone workstations. We have a Panasonic HVX200 HD camera with a Red Rock Micro M2 lens adapter system: HD footage shot directly to P2 Cards and depth of field control using cine-prime lenses. Also totally rocks. We have two other Panasonic DVX100 MiniDV cameras, a Canon XL2 MiniDV camera and two Canon XL1 MiniDV cameras. In the studio (and occasionally out on news shoots) we have two Panasonic shoulder-mount MasterDV cameras.

On the audio side we have one editing room with analog and a ProTools digital editing system. Each of our workstations can also edit using ProTools, but acquisition is generally done in the audio room. We use MiniDisk for field work with a number of handheld (mainly Sure SM58s) lavaliere and boom microphones.

In the live, three-camera studio we have some 'lovingly donated' equipment that teaches the concepts of live production. You can read into that what you will. :-)

All of our gear will also get upgraded as we move closer and closer to our new building. The Center for Informatics will house the College of Informatics (makes sense, huh?) in 2010-11. I'm on the design committee for that building and it is going to be about the coolest thing out there. An editing lab, graphics lab and two writing labs. Two studios - large and small. At least ten individual editing rooms, networked back to the main media server. A converged newsroom. Over a dozen other computer labs. And the pièce de résistance - the Digitorium, or "Digital Opera House". Ask me about it sometime.

The MIN Program

We have a new sister program too. From our perspective, Media Informatics is designed to be the "new media" extension of Electronic Media & Broadcasting. From the computer world MIN is the media extension of Computer Science. From the Journalism perspective it is the techie distribution of content beyond print and broadcast. Think: media for the third screen. Mobile technology. Gaming. MySpace/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Basically, where EMB generally looks at linear media (stories that are experienced beginning to end as the creative team intends them to be experienced) the MIN program is nonlinear media - where the individual audience member chooses the path that the story takes. Parts of MIN reach into EMB and parts of EMB reach into MIN. And as we go along we'll probably be merging more and more together. It's a wonderful time to what we do. It rocks. I say that a lot, don't I? Life is good...