Ryan Baker, a Show Maker – Visual Arts Student Spotlight

Ryan Baker is a second semester Entertainment Technologies major at Gulf Coast State College. While he is at an early start to his degree, he has been at Gulf Coast a bit longer 1 year. Originally Ryan’s degree was in Music Production. Sadly, this degree began to dissolve after several heads of the program began to retire, so Ryan decided it would be best to find a new major. He spoke with Jason Hedden, an associate professor of Visual and Performing arts at Gulf Coast to help him find something that was fairly close to his old degree program.

This graphic belongs to Gulf Coast State College and Chelsea Spiers, 2019.

Jason told him that he could either go with a Digital Media degree or an Entertainment Technology degree. Ryan decided in the end to go with Entertainment Tech, mostly because it was the most similar to his original degree choice. It also helped that his current program is mostly offered in the same building as Music Production, making him much more familiar with the class layout, as well as the professors that are in charge of the classes themselves. Despite having to change his plans early on in his college career, Ryan says that he likes this major better than his old one. With an Entertainment Tech degree, he can learn more facets of technology than just music production, making him more well-rounded in the process.

Thankfully, some of the classes he had already taken for his old degree plan have transferred over, so he doesn’t have to worry about any time wasted. Around the time of his transfer into Entertainment Tech during the Fall of 2018, the theatre department was getting ready for a performance of Much Ado About Nothing, a play by William Shakespeare. Right away Ryan was thrust into the busy world that is theatre production, and was extremely stunned that they would be learning how to build things and use power tools.

Not only were the use of tools a surprise, but also the use of chemicals. Ryan recounted to me just how strong the “junk paint” is. “I had a mask and a bandana on and I could still smell it,” said Ryan. It’s things like this that most people don’t usually think happens in the daily life of stage production, but Ryan now knows just how dirty you need to get sometimes. Now, Ryan is no stranger to manual labor, but was pleasantly surprised to find that theatre production was about more than just learning lines and adjusting lighting levels for the actors. This degree is full of real work and great opportunities, both for people who are interested in acting or not. Ryan is not opposed to acting at all, and has even auditioned for a few roles for the upcoming show, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He was unable to acquire a role this time around, but has gained the responsibility of running the sound production. According to Ryan, running the sound for a musical is twice as difficult than a normal play, because you have to keep track of the sound of the songs, and the audio levels for the actors at the same time.

A lot of his fellow classmates have warned him about the difficulty coming for him in this program, but Ryan has faith in himself. After all, sound production was the main focus of his last major, and the majority of his classes last semester. Being able to put a show like this on his resume has Ryan excited as well, since any production company will know outright that the difficulty is not to be laughed at. Instead, Ryan’s ability to run the sound for this show will likely aid him in his future endeavors for job hunting. On the recent trip with the theatre department to the Southeastern Theatre Conference this year, Ryan opted to go to the nearby workshops instead of the job fair portion. He figured that it would be smarted to learn more about his craft at his level instead of looking for jobs since he is still a couple of years away from graduation. These workshops are in a nearby convention hall, and are run by many different professionals from Broadway.

These professionals were able to tell the students all about the “real world” of theatre production. Ryan stated they were given a lot of information, such as “this is how we run stuff, this is how you do stuff, this is the tech we use,” which he considered to be a goldmine of information. The main focus that Ryan was interested in was the stage management portion of the workshop, as that is something he is planning on perusing in the upcoming Fall semester. Since Ryan lived in Tennessee for 4 years, he was extremely excited to have an opportunity to revisit “the old stomping grounds” despite the long and exhausting drive that came with it. “We immediately crashed when we got to the hotel,” said Ryan, which is entirely understandable. Despite being a fish out of water moving into this new degree, Ryan has taken an effort to get to know his new classmates, and feels that he will succeed in this program. I have no doubt that we will be able to see him in one of the school’s upcoming programs soon.

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