Oct 27, 2003 05:36 pm yes, i live here. hang on...
Full Sail???
Posted on Oct 27, 2003 04:46 pm
AK Redline
Seconds From The End
Member Since: Jun 16, 2003
Has amyone been to Full Sail Campus for recording arts in orlando folrida? can anybody tell me about it im realy interested in it
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Oct 27, 2003 06:02 pm i can tell you stuff. i never attended, but i know lots of people who do attend.
2 posts to follow. in this post, the town and campus.
full sail is full of big, shiny, super-expensive equipment. tuition, i think, is like $26,000 dollars. as such, it's as full of rich kids
as it is of poor schmucks who have no idea what they're getting themselves into.
it's not a campus. it's a series of (nice looking) office-type buildings on a busy street called university ave. inside, you'll find red carpeting, dim lights, air-conditioning, and brushed-steel hallways...aircraft style, if you know what i mean. the school is rich. they decorate nice.
university avenue is a wide, sunny road that runs between the university of central florida at its eastern end, to another big road called semoran blvd in the west. all urban roads in orlando are basically the same, trust me on this, but there are subtle differences. any urban road you're on is going to be crammed with strip malls, fast food joints, and restaurants. this is, essentially, what orlando IS--a retail trash pit/parking lot with bloodthirsty capitalism/development as its sole organizing principle. the difference on university ave is that the strip malls and restaurants are slightly better, more useful, and less of an eyesore than you'd find elsewhere in town. there's also plenty of apartments right near the campus. full sail kids, a lot of them, walk to class.
i mention all this stuff because it's worth a visit here to see if you can handle the total dissolution of 'community' which is a natural, organic phenomenon elsewhere in the country, but is lacking in orlando to the extent that once a month at least, there's a feature story in the orlando sentinel about why people leave here, and what townships are doing to reverse engineer the community spaces that they should have installed in the beginning, before they decided to just go and exploit the place. orlando never really grew its own soul, it was never about anything besides disney, and now that is a problem.
the bar scene here is less good than elsewhere, being mostly frat-type sports bars and trendy dance clubs, but there are a small number of artier, more underground places that pop up here and there.
that said, there are things to like about orlando. the beach is 45 minutes away. space shuttle launches are visible--just step outside. the weather in winter is good. there's no shortage of venues if you're in a band. it's pretty easy to get a gig at house of blues in downtown disney or hard rock live at universal islands of adventure. local bands put comp-shows together now and then. i'm waiting for this town to explode (if there were talent here, i bet it would). so, basically, you might like it here. who knows.
hang on for post 2
Oct 27, 2003 06:22 pm full sail recording: i'd say it's a good way to learn recording if you're comfortable with the exorbitant tuition. it's the most expensive school of its kind, or one of them, i've heard, so it can't be bad, right?
one time our band was recorded by a full sail class. thats one of the things they do there. if you're in a band, come on in, for free, and the students will record your live performance. i think there's also a way to get free studio time, but i'm not sure about that. the recording we got out of it sucked, but it was a live performance, and WE sucked, and maybe the class was just bad.
here's something to keep in mind: this town is crawling with full-sailers, mostly white dudes in thier 20's. (people say there's a severe shortage of girls at full sail.) it seems to me that a lot of them don't actually get jobs in the music industry, at least at first. the local sam ash superstore is staffed by (mostly) full-sailers. this isnt to say 'don't go,' of course, just remember that you get out what you put in, and a whole lot of students here seem to think it's a guaranteed career path or something. those types tend to be the types who smoke weed a lot. full sail is largely populated by 'dudes' whose parents have decided to pay thier way. drive by and there's always a hack-circle out front. so, with a market flooded by 'dudes' you might do well with a full sail education--if you take it seriously.
i've never been inside an actual recording class, so i dont know what goes on. i have, however, seen student films from the film program. horror. film classes are run as a group, which means no creative control. someone writes a script, another guy directs, then you have the crew people. in 'real' film programs, everyone does their own final project. anyway, the film stuff is obviously 'by the book.' there's an overuse of very bad digital effects (i guess in an attempt to integrate some other departments in the school), bad directing, bad stories, bad everything. when i looked at film school there, the demo reel of student films made me reconsider. if the recording program is run as a group, without a personal final project, i would, i guess, say no to it. you can have everything ruined by sharing a project with incompetent people, by trying to use every idea you learned for a project, to squeeze it all in (to accomodate everyone) like i witnessed with the film program. too many cooks can spoil the broth. a work of art needs cohesion.
i'm going to suggest that the recording program is mostly about learning all the processes and all the equipment, and probably pretty quickly. (you might get more personal attention with a focus on quality, for cheaper, at a smaller school, anbut this is a basically uninformed opinion. one thing's for sure--full sail will have top of the line equipment, everything you could possibly want. a major band--creed maybe? recorded there, and theyre not the only ones.) i would call and ask them if you get to do a solo project at the end as part of your grade. that would be a good thing. or, at least, find out if you have access to the equipment to work on your own time. that way you could produce something yourself. i remember taking a tour when i first moved here years ago and hearing stories about how many students just sleep in the hallways, and i think thats because you can schedule time with the equipment. it's also because the full sail class schedule runs all night, 24 hours a day. if you go to full sail, you will have some classes at 3 in the morning. i've known students, and its true. they stop being diurnal and it can be hard to balance a job with that. but they manage, and its kind of cool.
Oct 28, 2003 01:33 pm does that help at all? am i being too opinionated?
Oct 28, 2003 07:53 pm Wow... It's a full blown analysis! This is really cool to hear, as I'm considering recording school- Not Full Sail, but it's very interesting anyways.
Oct 28, 2003 09:35 pm cool. but dont depend on my uninformed opinion. talk to someone actually IN recording school.
Oct 28, 2003 10:03 pm any other suggestions for recording schools?
Oct 28, 2003 11:23 pm opinion only (and maybe wrong):
i would say to find one in your local area. not that i know anything about this, but i think in the end it matters less where you go then what you learn and how good you are at it. these schools are not exactly like a college and the recording industry is not exactly like 'the real world.' the recording industry works more by word of mouth and experience; that's my impression, that it's in large part 'who you know and what you've done and how good you were at doing it.' the institution you get your diploma from might not carry as much weight as it does with other careers. experience and facility will be your main selling points to get your foot in the door. so i say, go somewhere cheap (but solid), work hard, and sell yourself. if i were an employer, i would be far more impressed with someone who took recording seriously and had applied himself and taught himself a good deal on his own than with someone who paid 26,000 dollars to go to the 'best school.' why? because as i see it, going to the best school is no guarantee of anything in this industry. there's no 'career path' with recording--you have to forge your own. i dont even know if there are 'employers' as such. i mean, don't you just record some bands, then use that to wrestle your way into more lucrative gigs? bottom line: learn how to record. does it even matter where you get that knowledge?
jues would be the man to ask. jues, i suspect i may be rambling. is there any sense in this?
Oct 30, 2003 12:49 pm I had a friend who went to the local Recording Workshop in Chillochothie,OH ...and his brother went to Full Sail.
I was told the main difference is that after one year at full sail you will have a Bachelors degree in audio/video production/engineering where the places like Recording Workshop will give you a certificate and some college credit (maybe)
...and It was also my understanding that fullsail was populated mostly by people financed by parents or drug sales.
Oct 30, 2003 02:08 pm ...it's probably also important to point out that neither are working in the industry
Oct 30, 2003 02:39 pm that's what i was trying to get at, in a roundabout way. in an industry like this, play it safe with your money. unless you have parents that will foot the bill.
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