Cultural Event: Ferris Media Festival

Ferris Media Festival Image. Courtesy of the School of Digital Media and the Media Communication Association RSO. https://www.facebook.com/FerrisMediaFestival/?fref=ts

Ferris Media Festival Image. Courtesy of the School of Digital Media and the Media Communication Association RSO. https://www.facebook.com/FerrisMediaFestival/?fref=ts

Ferris Media Festival is a day-long event featuring media professionals from across the region who share their knowledge of working in the Media Production Industry. This event is hosted by the School of Digital Media and the Media Communication Association RSO and the event is free and open to the public. This year’s Media Festival will take place on Thursday, April 20th from 3:00pm to 8:00pm and Friday, April 21st from 9:00am to 5:00pm in the IRC. Below is the schedule and presenter bios.

Thursday, April 20:

  • 3:00 – 5:00pm Alex Kimbrough – Directs TDMP 385 in IRC 153C
  • 6:00 – 8:00pm Aaron Peterson – Film Screening/Q&A in BUS 111

Friday, April 21:

  • 9:00 – 9:15am Opening Remarks – Glen Okonoski 
  • 9:15 – 10:15am Josh Freeney – Yeti/CGI Game Artist 
    • YETi CGI, Inc. was founded in 2010 by university instructors as a game design and development studio to provide university students with the experience they need to gain employment in the industry. YETi served as an art and code outsource solution for a list of major companies that includes Disney, Nickelodeon, Rich Dad, GSN, Aptima, Kixeye, Steelcase, and Zynga. But since its inception, YETi has always been a place for practical futurists who live in the present.
  • 10:30 – 11:30am Alex Kimbrough – TV Director 
    • Alex is currently the director at WJBK Fox 2 Detroit. He also is Freelance Director at WTVS-56 Detroit Public Television and formerly President of Detroit Chapter National Association of Black Journalists
  • 11:45am – 12:45pm Aaron Peterson – Michigan Ice Film 
    • Aaron is the producer of Michigan Ice Film. He is a photographer and filmmaker based near Lake Superior of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For over 10 years he’s been bringing the rugged landscape and unique way of life of his region to the world stage. Along the way, his work has appeared in publications like Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Outdoor Life and many more.
  • 12:45 to 1:30pmLunch 
  • 1:30 – 2:30pm Tony Trudeau – Game Business/DAGD Grad
    • Senior art coordinator currently at Pocket Gems. He has been in the game industry for 7 years. The games he worked on include Farmville, War Dragons, Hidden Agendas: The Lionheart Mystery, Mafia Wars, GoPets, Campus Life, Paradise Cove, Night at the Museum, Secret Passages, and Book of Secrets. In addition to being an artist, he has also had the chance to manage Farmville’s art team as a producer using the agile/scrum method. During that time, he helped save the company over 400 man hours and received an award for practices he put into place that would carry over into the rest of the company. He later was sent to India to train the outsource team there as the acting art director. Currently Tony works at Pocket Gems as a Senior Art Coordinator, moving between projects as people need to keep them on track and starting up new game teams. He is also currently working on an unannounced project managing a team of artists, designers, and programmers.
  • 2:45 – 3:45pm Will Bonner – Google VR/Programming
    • Will is a lead engineer on a new series of VR appliances that Google are developing. Previously he worked as a QA engineer at RIOT (makers of the wildly popular game League of Legends). Will has extensive coding experience, and process development skills and could easily explain the requirements of such a position.
  • 4:00 – 5:00pm Jerry Berlongieri – Game Sound Design 
    • Jerry is currently the Audio Director for Take-Two Interactive Software, formerly Audio Director for Microsoft Game Studios and Senior Sound Designer for Activision.

For more information, please contact Megan Soller at or view their event on Facebook. 

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