Video Production
Introduction:I am a volunteer Certified Producer for the PEGASYS Public Access TV Station in Ithaca, NY (cable channel 13 in Tompkins County, NY), and my current activities include:
- Developing commercials & documentaries for local charitable & educational organizations.
- Helping produce TV programs broadcast from the PEGASYS TV studio.
Video production nicely combines my interests in community service, story-telling, and technology.
History:
My initial work in video production was to record family events & produce tapes & DVDs. Next, I introduced computer-based video editing to Transonic Systems and trained marketing managers in video production. I helped produce several training videos, which included traveling to a New Jersey hospital to videotape use of Transonic flowprobes during open-heart surgery.
In 2008 I saw an ad for the Ithaca PEGASYS Public Access TV station, and decided to take their Studio Production and Field Production courses . My "graduation project" for station manager Lauren Stefanelli was to create a PSA (Public Service Announcement - i.e. a commercial) for a new exhibit at the History Center in Tompkins County.
Since then I've done more History Center commercials that typically broadcast 5-6x per day on Cable Channel 13 in Tompkins County. I have also recorded & post-produced History Center educational lectures for Channel 13 broadcast. Other organizations I've worked with include Compos Mentis: Working Towards Wellness, where I created a commercial and recorded & post-produced a TV interview about their programs.
I am currently into my second year at PEGASYS, and my work has received the following awards and recognition.
- 2009 PEGASYS Award - Public Speaking Programming - "Hallelujah, We're Bad" - Historian Mary White's talks about the wild early days of Ithaca's West End.
- 2009 PEGASYS Award - Short Subject Programming - "Riding the Rails" - commercial for the History Center on their exhibit on railroads & their affect on Tompkins County life. Voice-over by Gary Reinbolt.
- 2009 Theodore Case Film Festival - screening of "The History of Aviation" - commercial for a History Center exhibit on early Tompkins County aviation. Voice-over by Bruce McKee.
- 2009 Alliance for Community Media Northeast Region Video Festival.The History of Aviation also placed 2nd in the PSA (Public Service Announcement) category.
In 2009 I completed my first PEGASYS documentary, where I did field interviews with musician Walter White about the Ithaca Sound Maze - a corn maze that contains unique musical instruments created from discarded farm implements.
Current Projects:
My current volunteer video projects are:
- Hunger is a problem YOU Can Solve - A Fundraising PSA for the Friendship Donations Network - a Central New York Hunger Program that rescues food from supermarkets & gives it free to pantries and hunger programs throughout Central New York. (completed December 2009)
- "Play With Your Food" - a documentary about a summer program that introduces city kids to hands-on gardening, healthy eating, and cooking. The program - organized by Audrey Zelda Baker & friends - is jointly sponsored by The New York Coalition for Healthy School Food and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County. (Filming completed, in post-production, completion in Spring 2011).
- "Miriam Bisk & The Street Musicians of Raanana" - This documentary discusses how Miriam helped start an orchestra in Raanana, Israel. The orchestra was intended to employ the many classically-trained Russian musicians who had emigrated to Israel. A small country like Israel could not employ so many musicians as musicians, so the majority ended up playing on the Streets of Raanana, hoping that someone could give them money or a job. Enter Miriam and an amazing story.
This in-progress documentary consists of interviews with Miriam and videos/pictures that discuss her role in starting the Symphonette, and the reasons why a stay-at-home mother would give more than two years of her life (unpaid) to this project.
Some of the reasons lie in Miriam's background - she is the child of Polish Holocaust survivors who dodged Nazi concentration camps & then attempted to emigrate to Palestine, only to end up in a British-run detention camp in Cyprus...This documentary is in the research stage, and we'll probably complete this sometime in 2011.
- The Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom - a one-minute commercial that features footage of the classroom ship Haendel in action, as well as underwater video from the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. (Planning stage).
Technical Details:
At the PEGASYS TV studio I work on live and taped broadcasts with teams of community volunteers. Depending on the show, I may run an Inscriber real-time titler; handle a video switcher for three programmable cameras, a DVD player, and a laptop computer; set up. light, and mike the set; and monitor the sound board.
I also do field recordings, post-production, and have recently started writing and performing voice-overs.
I currently use standard-definition DV camcorders, and my post-production and editing is done with Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c running under Windows XP Professional. I render my projects to DVD. NEXUS MP2 format, Windows Media 9, and Quicktime 7 and Ipod formats. I also create custom DVDs with DVD Architect Pro 5.0.