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 folks from the GMSA are a few of the guests among the dozens of individuals and organizations featured on The Advocacy Team since 2003. The list includes Special Olympics Vermont, Vermont Expos, Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, VSA Arts and the former mayor of Burlington, Peter Clavelle.

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!

Tonight at 7:30 pm Vermont Public Television is hosting a live web chat with Vermont ACLU director, Allen Gilbert, and assistant US attorney, Bill Darrow.  The focus of the chat will be “Civil Liberties in a Changing World.”  In an email, Gilbert writes…

I’m a panelist with Bill Darrow, an assistant U.S. attorney here in Vermont. The topic is “Civil Liberties in a Changing World.” Darrow, as you may know, is pretty aggressive in defending government actions in national security, drugs, death penalty, etc.



The chat on Wednesday will focus on national security, and I’m sure Darrow will try to belittle claims that civil liberties have been diminished because of the war on terror — or that if they have, the Bush administration has structured security programs in a way that minimizes civil liberties impacts while maximizing protection of U.S. citizens’ safety.

Go here to log into the chat — you can comment anonymously if you wish.

The Nation posted an article this week about the Al Jazeera satellite news network and its growing popularity around the world.  The article’s author, Ned Lamont (yes, that Ned Lamont), mentions that despite Al Jazeera English’s widespread acceptance overseas, there are precious few TV channels in the US that carry its content…

Al Jazeera’s most recent offspring, Al Jazeera English, is more like PBS on a slow day. Al Jazeera English is available around the world and even on the Israeli cable systems. But it is barely visible in the United States–Buckeye Cable in Ohio and Burlington Public Access in Vermont are the only channels that carry it.

By “Burlington Public Access,” Lamont is referring to VCAM’s sister organization RETN, which runs a 1/2 hour of fresh Al Jazeera English programming every weekday at 6:30 pm.  RETN operates channel 16 on Comcast and Burlington Telecom cable systems in Chittenden County.

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.

On October 31st, the FCC made some decisions concerning media ownership and franchising rules that could adversely affect public, educational and government access centers nationwide. It’s one more push towards a cliff that PEG centers have been inching closer to over the last several years. Basically, the FCC is attempting to remove rules that permit local franchising authorities (in this case, the Vermont Public Service Board) from requiring cable companies to set aside funds for PEG services.

If that sounds confusing at all, Toward Freedom has published an excellent piece on the various threats facing PEG centers that spells it all out in plain English. If you care at all about VCAM, local media, free speech or empowering the citizenry with technology, please take a minute and read the article. Here’s a snip…

Cue unsettling music that foreshadows ominous events: The Telcos, eyeing television as their next mile marker, have “determined that local franchises are just too troublesome for their business model,” according to SaveAccess.org. Instead, the phone companies want a national franchise agreement, which would allow them to enter communities without negotiating with municipalities, thereby gutting any local control over channels and rights-of-way, or public spaces.

“The municipalities have a lot at stake, primarily with rights-of-way,” Eisenmenger said. “When that telephone or cable company comes in and digs up the streets [and put in cable boxes], having the municipalities have control… to make sure those go in appropriate places, that the streets are cleaned up and repaved.”

The Telcos tried first to tip Congress in its favor, but a national franchise bill died in the Senate in 2006, though frighteningly, the House passed the bill. Always a survivor, the phone companies have switched gears, now pursuing state video franchises – comprehensive state-wide agreements negotiated at the state level which usually circumnavigate local governments.

…

In a separate court, the supposed referee, the FCC, is taking sides. In 2006, the agency made its own order to allow for a national video franchise. Several PEG advocacy groups have sued the FCC, including the Alliance for Communications Democracy and the Alliance for Community Media.

SaveAccess.org also reported in September that the agency is expected to “rule that existing cable operators can, under certain circumstances, back out of key provisions in their current franchise contracts with local governments, renegotiate lower municipal fees, and reduce the benefits they currently provide to the public.”

This Friday VCAM will be hosting a new group of artists.  Come down and see the work, meet the artists and have some refreshments.  The show is called Luminists and features work by Marcia Blanco, David Mialle and Dan O’Donnell.  The reception will run from 6 to 8 pm at the VCAM studio.  We hope you can join us.

VCAM viewers may be familiar with Penny Dreadful, the hostess of Penny Dreadful’s Shilling Shockers — an access show that comes to us from Massachusetts. Ms. Dreadful got a nod in today’s USA Today in an article about the history and legacy of horror movie show hosts and hostesses. Her name appeared in the article along side such other horror show luminaries as Vampira and Zachary. Congratulations, Penny!

From the article…

With the advent of cable access and YouTube, a new generation of horror hosts is emerging from the genre’s freshly dug graves. Dr. Gangrene in Nashville appears on local TV in a retro horror show that also features his red-haired assistant, Nurse Moan-Eek. In Massachusetts, Penny Dreadful hosts movies ranging from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die to The Seventh Seal on public access stations. She says her character “is definitely in the tradition of the dark mysterious lady you don’t want to mess with — Vampira.”

Check out Penny Dreaful’s Halloween special, The Horror Hosts of New England! The hour and a half special will run three times on Halloween — at 6:30 am, 7:30 pm, and an extra scary 1:00 am late-night airing. Tune in!

This year, VCAM & RETN are partnering with the Vermont International Film Festival in the screening of the film Four Eyed Monsters. The film will play on the festival’s opening night — Thursday October 11 at 7:00 pm.  The film’s after-party will be held here at the VCAM studio. Because Four Eyed Monsters screens on the festival’s opening night, the after-party will double as the opening night party of the whole festival!

VCAM and RETN are thrilled to help bring this film to Burlington. It is a wonderful example of user-generated media-making — our stock-in-trade in the PEG access world. It’s an autobiographical film about two young New Yorkers (Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, the film’s co-directors, who play themselves in the film) who meet and decide to avoid all the trite conventions of courtship — like spoken language. The film is peppered with the actual video and still images the couple took of themselves as they met, dated, broke apart, came back together, and made the film itself. It’s incredibly raw and real and intensely voyeuristic in its tone.

Filmmaker Magazine has called Buice and Crumley part of the “mumblecore” indy film movement, which Wikipedia describes as, “an American independent film movement that arose in the mid-2000’s. It is primarily characterized by ultra-low budget production (often employing digital video cameras), focus on personal relationships between twenty-somethings, improvised scripts, and non-professional actors.”

Four Eyed Monsters was released for free under a Creative Commons license for a limited time on YouTube.  It was nominated for two 2007 Independent Spirit Awards and it took home the Special Audience Award at the SXSW film Festival in 2005.

Co-director Susan Buice will attend the screening and (we hope) the after-party here at VCAM.  Both events happen on Thursday evening, October 11.  The film will screen at the Waterfront Theater downtown at 7:00 pm and the party gets underway immediately afterwards here at VCAM.  Hope to see you there!