DAVE School Graduates Patrick (PJ) Salamon and Braden Brunk recently won BEST VFX at both the Oniros Film Awards and the 1st Quarter Prague International Indie Film Festival for the short film Man of Fire. The film was written and directed by Heather Schmidt and boasts actor Lance Reddick as the lead.
Career Services Director Michael Keith initially recommended PJ for the film as a freelance Visual Effects artist and he did such a great job that he had his contract extended to include more VFX. He brought on classmate Braden Brunk and the two of them created all Visual Effects for the film under their studio Lucent Studios.
The film has gone into several other film festivals including Venice Shorts, GeekFest Toronto and Montreal Independent Festival. It has achieved numerous awards for Best Director and Soundtrack for Heather Schmidt, Best Actor, Best Fantasy, Best Choreography, and has won BEST FILM in a couple of festivals as well.
About The DAVE School
The DAVE School was founded on June 8, 2000 by two Industry executives looking to create #CareerReady artists with a practical animation school. Today, The DAVE School offers specialized training in Visual Effects and Game Production with extensive practice under industry level supervision.
Located on the backlot of Universal Studios Florida®, The DAVE School has an 18,000 square foot facility that includes learning and interactive labs, a dedicated Virtual and Real-Time production stage, a Vicon motion capture system, 3D printing and VR/AR labs and secure student access 7 days a week.
NUC University (NUC) is an accredited institution and a member of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE or the Commission) www.msche.org. NUC’s NUC University – IBC Technical Division (NUC-IBC), NUC University – Florida Technical College (NUC-FTC), The Digital Animation & Visual Effects School (The DAVE School), and Hillsboro Aero Academy (HAA) are included in this accreditation. NUC’s accreditation status is Accreditation Reaffirmed. The Commission’s most recent action on the institution’s accreditation status on 2019 was to reaffirm accreditation. MSCHE is recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education to conduct accreditation and pre-accreditation (candidate status) activities for institutions of higher education including distance, correspondence education, and direct assessment programs offered at those institutions. The Commission’s geographic area of accrediting activities is throughout the United States. NUC has four additional academic units: NUC University – IBC Technical Division (NUC-IBC), NUC University – Florida Technical College (NUC-FTC), The Digital Animation & Visual Effects School (The DAVE School); and Hillsboro Aero Academy (HAA). Information about NUC, NUC-IBC, NUC-FTC, The DAVE School, and HAA is available at https://nuc.edu/, https://tecnicos.nuc.edu/, https://ftccollege.edu/, https://dave.nuc.edu, and https://flyhaa.com/.