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…
Ira Glass, producer and host of PRI’s wonderful radio program, This American Life, gives some wonderful, inspiring and reassuring advice to media makers in this YouTube video. Whether you’re a newcomer to media-making or have been producing your own show for years, this is incredibly valuable advice…
Lately Glass and the TAL crew have taken their show to TV, and are now in their second season of This American Life on Showtime. The cable show presents some of the finest short-form documentary filmmaking happening right now. The first season is available on DVD.
Forest, Bill, Paul and Charlie from The Advocacy Team were in the VCAM studio today recording their 100th episode. Above is a snapshot from their preproduction session where they met with their special guests from the Green Mountain Self Advocates. As you’ll likely notice on their website, the GMSA is:
a statewide self-advocacy network run and operated by people with developmental disabilities [and they’re] building a movement for self-advocacy through public education and awareness, peer mentoring, support, advocacy and direct action.
The Advocacy Team is sponsored by Champlain Community Services and can be seen Sundays at 8:30am, Wednesdays at 10:00am and Thursdays at 9:00pm on VCAM Channel 15 . We’d like to congratulate to all the members of the Advocacy Team for reaching this milestone and thank them for all their hard work and ongoing commitment to community media.
This is an update for all you folks out there who read VCAM’s blog post from last August about Jackie Yantachka , the senior from CVU who as of yesterday has completed her Senior Grad Challenge in Broadcast Television at the VCAM studio.
It was a delight to attend her final presentation yesterday. She was in front of a packed house, filled with family, community consultants and a sizable panel of teachers and instructors.
Jackie covered everything from the appropriate use of a lapel mic to the work flow in master control. She employed an impressive Power Point presentation that included still images of nearly every component to the VCAM studio, screen captures of her FCP timeline and bin structure, plus images illustrating the strategy behind the different shots she incorporated. She concluded her presentation with a short segment from her video project highlighting a variety of footage including interviews with moviegoers, film reviews and movie clips. The uproarious applause from the crowded room was indicative of the the quality of Jackie’s work.
It was obvious from the start she arrived at VCAM with a good deal of experience, however throughout her time at the VCAM studio her skills grew even sharper. By the end, her ability to navigate the FCP interface was quite impressive.
As part of her grad challenge, Jackie was also required to write at length about her learning experience in a final paper that she concludes by saying:
For years I’ve been interested in the production of the shows that I see on TV. At the local public access channel VCAM, I was able to take on the challenge of making my own TV show and airing it – something that I have never been able to do with my previous films. VCAM is all about encouraging others in the community to learn the filming and editing processes to make their ideas come to life. For the first time, I was able to film in a studio and learn how to work the multifaceted equipment. For CVU Filmmaker’s Club, the movies I’ve been involved in have always had crews of at least four people, so with my project at VCAM, I felt that I had more control, and there was better communication with my cameraman. I was able to create a show that incorporated footage from the field, studio, and additional movie clips, and then broadcast it for many others to see. Hopefully, I will be able to continue using my skills and explore more techniques for creating TV shows like the ones I have always admired.
There’s little doubt Jackie’s wishes will be granted as she will be attending the school of communications at Syracuse University in the fall. Way to go Jackie!
Thank you for all the hard work and best of luck from all of us at VCAM!
Check out Rebecca Kopycinski’s opening credits for her new show Burly Song. She designed them using Adobe’s CS3 here at the VCAM studio and in the process she has rapidly become quite skilled at After Effects. Burly Song will feature performances by musicians from our local independent music scene as well as special guest appearances from touring musicians performing in the Burlington area. You can look for Burly Song to premiere on VCAM Channel 15 next week!
VCAM producer Brian Plisko and his partners at Rise Up Vermont traveled to Senegal and Gambia in February to put on the Foreward Home 2008 West African Tour, featuring music by leading Virgin Island Roots artists. They brought with them a camera package from VCAM, and they’re making a documentary about the trip, which will air on VCAM channel 15 upon completion. Brian stopped by the studio today to share some photos from the tour and to thank VCAM for the support, which we were happy to give. Brian writes…
With your camera we were able to document a truly beautiful tour, with the resilient and colorful African culture at the forefront of our consciousness. You have helped us so tremendously bring the beauty and spirit of Africa back to Vermont…
The trip wasn’t all about music, Brian and crew also brought seeds (for farms), solar panels, water pumps and medical supplies for a midwifery called The African Birth Collective.
At the very least this is a solid example of a D.I.Y. alternative to what tends to be an overly expensive production tool if purchased through say….B&H. While it’s easy to question the mobility and durability of the end-product you gotta dig the spirit behind the project…
VCAM volunteer extraordinaire, Jeff Botas, has been experimenting with streaming some VCAM shows live on the Internet as well as offering them up for on-demand playback as podcasts and/or video blogs. So far, the experiments have been on Jason Piche’s Talking Trash, Brian Kling’s Street Signs and L.J. Palardy’s Global Sounds. Once we have a streamlined system in place for doing this regularly, we will offer training to producers who wish to do this for their own shows.
Jeff uses a combination of free web applications and Macintosh software to do the streaming and podcasting of the shows. For streaming shows live online, Jeff plugs the output of the record deck in the control room into his Mac laptop (we’re working on getting a machine in the control room for this specifically) and sends the live program up to a site called ustream.tv — a free web-based streaming and social networking site. As it’s uploaded, ustream sends the signal out live over the net. Anyone in the world with net access can watch the show, call the studio line (if the show is live on the air at the time) or even participate via an IRC chat session that the show’s host monitors during the broadcast.
For podcasting the video and audio of the completed show, Jeff is using blip.tv. Jeff writes…
This site rocks. There are a plethora of features that allow me to do everything I want and more with my video. Unlike YouTube, I can upload an entire show with no time or file size limits. No more splitting a half-hour show into 4 pieces with poor video quality. FTP is available so that I am easily able to upload one or multiple shows. The available distribution methods are phenomenal. I only use the RSS syndication for iTunes, the Facebook API, and Cross-posting, but there are many others (Internet Archive, del.icio.us, Twitter, MySpace, AOL Video, etc). The Facebook method puts a Blip.tv video player in your profile and automatically displays the most recently uploaded video. The Auto Cross-posting feature automatically makes a new post on your blog with embed code that shows your most recently uploaded video (ex: http://streetsignsvt.blogspot.com).
Thanks to Blip.tv, it’s easy to host and syndicate a video podcast while iTunes makes it easy to find for a large audience. Since I have Blip automatically creating the RSS feed for me, all I had to do was submit the feed URL to the iTunes podcast directory. Though the podcast has been available for several weeks, Jason and I finally found the time to do this for Talking Trash last night. I would have done it sooner, as I would for Street Signs, but I thought it best to have the show’s producer make the submission (using their Apple ID).
Here’s last Wednesday’s Talking Trash, which was streamed live over the web and then uploaded to blip.tv…
As Paula Routly mentioned at Friday’s Producers’ Recognition Dinner, we are entering an age of new media. The only question is, will we willingly embrace these new methods of online publishing and video distribution or will we fight, kicking and screaming, as we are dragged into this brave new world. We at VCAM are aiming for the former option. Thanks to people like Jeff and forward-thinking producers like Jason, Brian and L.J., the rest of us are able to learn by their examples.
