A couple of weeks ago I was talking about how the newest episode of the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyages was now online, and how a bit of its effects work had been done by the same people who do the Peabody-winning Battlestar: Galactica (which will be starting its fourth season in just another month and a half, which already has me excited); what I didn't mention, though, was that the majority of the effects done in this fan-produced episode were in fact provided by a group of college students, as a final project at their school -- the Digital Animation & Visual Effects (or DAVE) School, that is, based down in Orlando, Florida on the lot of Universal Studios there. And the more I looked into this cool little trade school down in Florida that had provided so many amazing effects for this fan-produced Star Trek episode, the more amazed I kept getting at all the other stuff I found at that school as well.

You see, the school was co-founded by Hollywood veterans and husband-and-wife team Jeff and Anne Scheetz; and in this highly competitive world right now of training future computer-graphics specialists, the Scheetzes promise at DAVE one of the closest environments you're going to get to an actual working Hollywood one, ergo the most practical amount of training, most connections into the real industry after graduation, etc. And as far as that stuff is concerned, DAVE seems to be fine as far as what's at their website, although I'm admittedly no expert on the computer-graphics industry and can't give you nearly an "expert" opinion on what the DAVE School is like; for those who would like to do a little exploring/research on their own, here for example is their staff list, and here is a walk-through online tour of their classroom environment.

No no, the real reason for a film fan to visit the DAVE website is in fact their past project page, where they have posted free downloads and streaming versions of all their classes' past 18 films/final projects, which is a major selling point that DAVE uses in the first place -- that for the last four weeks of your education there, you and your class will actually do all the work from start to finish for an actual film or video project, most of them 10 to 15 minutes in length and with most of them having more actual "Hollywood" connections than your typical class at a four-year university or what have you. And doing a quick run-down of what past classes have actually worked on there, you can plainly see that the DAVE staff isn't kidding when they say a closer Hollywood connection than normal; for example, they've gotten permission now over the years to do little side projects for the Star Wars universe, the toy franchise Teddy Scares, the latest animated version of Batman, the X-Men comic-book series, the Ghostbusters franchise and more. Not to mention that they've managed to fanagle such real stars to their class projects as Mark Hamill, Adam West, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Dick Van Dyke, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis...and actually I could go on here, but I won't.

Like I said, I'm in no position to give you an opinion on whether DAVE School is any good or not; if you want a really fun afternoon of getting nothing in particular done, though, I highly recommend stopping by their movie page, and watching some of the semipro short films their students are cranking out every semester, in styles that range from Disney glare to cute-girl goth to Soviet-style formalism and grandiosity. There's a little something for everyone there (or, everyone who enjoys computer animation in one form or another), and it's definitely a very lively and profound advertisement for the effectiveness of the school itself.