BHS teen filmmaker Graham Raubvogel has written and directed a short film for the high school filmmaking club that met at VCAM on Fridays during the last school year. We shot the film at VCAM with a cast and crew made up of professional filmmakers and film club students, resulting an a veritable master class in filmmaking. Eat your heart out, Maine Workshops!

Art Lovers from Graham Raubvogel on Vimeo.

If you click through to Vimeo you can watch the film in HD.

VCAM producers Bill Villemaire, Forrest Scrivens and Paul Nichols are featured in this week’s Seven Days, talking about their show, The Advocacy Team. Check it out!

A short while ago, nature-lover and VCAM member, Joanna Cummings, approached us with an idea and asked if she could use VCAM’s free public access resources to get her project off the ground. Her idea was to produce a blog “as a means to create social groups interested in sharing their thoughts, activities, videos, photos and knowledge in the areas of Vermont nature, agriculture and the environment.” Joanna indicated to us that she would likely need video production gear to go out into the community and shoot video content, digital editing facilities, a computer with Internet access, a couple different web-design applications, and access to video tutorials to help her get the ball rolling.

As it turns out, VCAM’s new workstation dedicated to web-design (a new iMac equipped with Adobe CS4 Web Premium) along with our video production gear, editing facilities, and subscription to the extensive Lynda.com video tutorial library, were the essential tools for her to get started. Over the last few weeks, Joanna experimented with different templates for her blog, using free web-based applications including Blogger and Ning, before deciding to go with Wordpress. Her goal was to have enough happening on her blog to launch it today, Earth Day 2009, and that she did. Please take a minute to check out Joanna’s new project, leave her a comment or two, and join in the greater conversation about preserving our natural environment by living thoughtfully on the land.

On Saturday students in the Burlington High School after school film club shot a short film in the VCAM space. The film is called “Art Lovers” and is the brain child of BHS sophomore (and award-winning filmmaker) Graham Raubvogel. Graham and fellow students Keith LaFountaine, Steven Jaramillo and Michelle Martinek were joined by a team of professional filmmakers, actors and technicians for the production day, which was a hands-on master class in filmmaking.

One of VCAM’s security cameras caught all the action, one frame per second. Below is all 12 hours of shooting — from the minute the first crew walked in the door at 8:00 AM, until the last staff person shut out the lights and left at 8:00 PM — compressed into a single minute of video. Enjoy…

Watch Eva Sollberger’s latest Stuck in Vermont featuring VCAM! Hear many local cable access producers rhapsodize about the magic of television and the freedom of self-expression.

Tomorrow (Friday 11/14) is the night of our annual VCAM Producers’ Recognition Dinner, where we get everyone in a big room, feed them, and thank them for all of the time and effort they put into creating VCAM content.

As with the last few of these events, the evening will be emceed by Seven Days videographer (and VCAM producer) Eva Sollberger. Our keynote speaker will be author, blogger, VPR commentator and UVM prof, Philip Baruth.

These dinners are always a good opportunity to take a look back at some of the accomplishments of our community of media-makers. Here are a few highlights…

• Our hostess tomorrow, the afore mentioned Eva Sollberger, recently won first place in her category at the Alliance for Community Media Northeast Regional Video Festival for her Stuck in Vermont series.
• VCAM’s own staff took home the first place prize in the “PEG Promo” category in that same festival for the first episode of our rare-but-excellent VCAM VCAST!
• In October, two BHS students who are VCAM producers were the only high schoolers to compete in the Vermont International Film Festival’s Student Showcase — and they won awards! Sophomore Graham Raubvogel took home the Best Short award for a film he co-directed called The First Supper, and freshman Keith LaFountaine won an Honorable Mention for his film, If You Can’t Say Anything Nice….
• The very same Graham Raubvogel won first place at the Santa Monica Teen Film Festival this summer for his film, Keeping Time.
• At the Alliance for Community Media’s national conference this past summer, VCAM took the prize for best access center website, and VCAM production Manager, Bill Simmon, got an Honorable Mention for his short documentary about Vermont blogger, Steve Benen.
• That same short documentary, Digital Pamphleteer, screened at several film festivals in 2008 and won the Best Short Documentary award at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival in July.

I hope I’m not forgetting anyone — if I am, send me a note and I’ll update the post.

Congratulations to all of the award-winners and keep up the great work! And remember, we’re giving out some awards ourselves tomorrow night, so stay tuned for that!

One of the most divisive programs in VCAM’s 24-year history in terms of viewer response is calling it quits.  Subterranean SINema, produced by Magister Matthew G. Paradise, has aired its last episode on VCAM channel 15.  Matt began producing the show back in 1997 and over the years, “SubSIN” has been notable both as one of the shows that generated the most viewer response, and as a show with particularly high production values.  Matt used to edit his episodes of SubSIN at the channel 15 studios, but as his production skills improved and editing software became more readily available, he started producing the shows totally in his own home, from soup to nuts.

Matt writes…

 … somewhere in there also lurks the reality that much of the material the show was famous for can now be seen around the world by visiting online sites such as Break.com and YouTube. Back in the late-90s, SubSIN was highly sought after, whether its live transmission, VHS copies, or, later on, the DVD. But, alas, the Internet changed all of that and I, intelligently, must change with the times. If you loved the show, the spirit of Subterranean SINema certainly permeates the online world in ways public access television never could on its own. That’s my indirect way of saying that I love you, VCAM — and you need to put a streaming feed of your programming (not just a few shows) on the Internet. Merely a helpful, if not belabored, suggestion.

It was a very good time. Subterranean SINema, like so many things I do, serves as a roadmap through a period of my life — in this case, my 30s. SubSIN, believe it or not, prompted me to go back to college and get serious about video, and VCAM was instrumental in that regard, giving me exposure to editing, shooting, lighting, and producing an actual show. How can I not be grateful to both public access TV and that little controversial show monikered by a pentagram-trapped skull and crossbones?

VCAM is indeed looking at putting all locally-produced VCAM programming online — though probably in an on-demand way rather than as a 24/7 live stream.  There are some organizational concerns to tackle first, which are surprisingly more complex than the technical issues, which seem pretty straight forward.  Stay tuned for more info on that.

Matt also produced the show Satanism Today, which aired on VCAM’s channel 15 a few years ago.  As a result of Matt’s involvement here at VCAM, we are still sometimes asked if VCAM is the home of “that Satan channel.”   It’s interesting that featuring shows like Victory For You!, Calvary Life, Good News Broadcast, Key to the Kingdom, Time of God, Heavenly Sonshine, Revelations, Tomorrow’s World, Living Bread and the weekly Catholic mass (all shows currently in our playback rotation) doesn’t get people to ask us if we are the home of “that Jesus channel,” but I guess the word “Satan” is particularly memorable in a TV show title (take note, future VCAM producers!).

Good luck in your future endeavors, Matt!

Graham Raubvogel, a local film/video director, BHS student and inspired VCAM Producer, recently took first prize at the Santa Monica Teen Film Festival with his short film Keeping Time.

Graham’s award winning piece is about a young man named Oscar who is haunted by his past and struggling to move forward with his life. It is one of Graham’s very first short films (many of which can be viewed on his You Tube channel) and was shot during his freshman year at Burlington High School. It is clear he is a talented young filmmaker with a bright future ahead.

Congratulations Graham on all your hard work and momentous award! We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for new projects in the future…