Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475409
14 I m ps e . o rg STUDENT CORNER BY DAVID BONDELEVITCH MPSE I was very happy to be asked to write about my former student Matt Telsey (from the University of Colorado Denver) about his transition from college into work in the film industry. DAVID BONDELEVITCH MPSE: Are you from Denver originally? MATT TELSEY: Yeah. Cherry Creek High School. They had a very cool music program. I took one class called music technology. It was just basically a keyboard setup station for every student. You got a MacBook with GarageBand and a MIDI keyboard. Our projects were just writing songs. The teacher was very focused on getting the technology in our hands and letting us experience it for the first time. He brought in professional musicians who would explain how they got started. That was my senior year of high school. That helped me transition into deciding that I wanted to go for music. I knew I didn't want to work in a cubicle. DB: Were your parents supportive? MT: Very supportive. They bought me a keyboard. I remember getting my very first MacBook for my graduation present senior year and loading up GarageBand first thing and hooking it up to my keyboard. I went to Fort Lewis College for freshman year. I did the music program up there. Dr. Campi Walters really whipped my ass in shape, getting dropped into their classical department. I really thrived there. I took music theory there. I transferred from there to Front Range Community College in Fort Collins. I went there to get general education credits and take some music classes. I did some of my first recording there. I remember running microphones through the whole music department to get from the computer room through three other rooms to the piano. It was my first real experience recording, which I totally nerded it out about. I was studying jazz privately with Ben Markley at CSU. It was really wonderful. I wanted to transfer to Berklee as a performing musician. I really wanted to do film scoring first. That's really what I had kind of set my heart on. I applied to Berklee, but I did not get in. I was not ready. I had my heart crushed by them. They put you in the auditorium with all hundred auditions going the same day. Everyone's freaking out. They don't give you any of the materials until you have a five-minute study period, and they tell you to sight read. I was a nervous wreck. That was pretty devastating. That's when I found the University of Colorado Denver (UCD), where you teach, and I just kind of pivoted from there, which really helped because my family is in Denver, and I was at home for a semester. I thought this will work. I knew that you were there, David, but I wouldn't even see you until senior year. But I had my heart set on all the film program stuff, and I didn't even get to do that until senior year. I kind of just coasted those first few semesters. I got by and I just knew that I didn't want to be a recording engineer for music, and that's what 90% of my classes were about. A lot of the information was the basics, but I didn't realize at the time that what I was learning was critical to what I'm doing now. Especially now that I'm teaching someone not having that base. How do I explain this whole concept? I just assumed that it was in everyone's head already. I took all your classes. As soon as I could, I signed up for all your classes. I took the scoring class. Every Monday and Wednesday, you had me from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (with a lunch break). I was just sitting front row center, let's go, I finally have something I'm interested in and have to get myself together because it's senior year and what am I going to do next year? DB: Were my classes any use? MT: Absolutely, I was just saying I was trying to teach my friend now. Just the basic concepts of timecode and lining things up, the basic understanding of a film session. I got such a broad view of every job in the industry from you. I even, with my internship, got to sit in with every little group, ADR mixing, Foley, everybody. I got a really wide understanding between your classes and the internship of how everything in the industry works but trying to teach one of my friends that was completely blind to all of this is very difficult. I felt like I needed to sit him down in a classroom setting and go through all of everyone's job. It's been hard. It's taken months to get him up and running. I just had him cue his first episode the other day. DB: Did you score any student films? MT: I did film scores at the film school. I worked with faculty member Jessica