HCAM Production Coordinator

After realizing today that it has been about 14 months since my last post, I decide to write again. Of course, it only took me six tries of sign on and password combinations to find the right one, I noticed I had a draft in cue. I decided to give it a read again and found it worthy of posting. So enjoy and see my comments at the end.

March 2010 – As most of you know, I’m very laid back and my stress level is probably a -2 on a scale of 1 to 10. This week however, has been a challenge. HCAM’s first ever News program airs tonight and at this moment, completed the first edit, complete with the opening. Now that it is done, I am feeling exhausted.

My stress level peaked this morning around what I would like to call a 9. Now, I get excited with every first show that I do anyway, but this one is different. HCAM has made a huge commitment as well as a huge financial obligation to expanding our programming to do 3 newscasts a week, so I guess I should be nervous.

Things could have been worst I guess, but having a great staff, like Jim and his vision and Michelle with her nose for the news, it made things a little bit easier. I can’t forget to mention the “new kid” Don. Although he is learning our equipment, style and system, his dedication and passion for this business is an asset. As always, I can’t do anything without the help of the volunteers. Mark Collins sits in as reporter and anchor, Mike Preite anchors and covers the sport scene, Punky keeps us up on the Senior Beat, Dick Bartlett dazzles us with his photographs of everything that goes on around town and Kelly Grill reporting on the local arts.

But the team doesn’t stop there, Mary Lee handles our promotions. We create a lot of great things here and you got to get the word out. Karen Davis keeps the community bulletin board up to date, which informs the town about all the local events. And kudos to Casey for coordinating them both and for a great job with the playback.

We come a long way since then and the news grew bigger and better that our original vision. We still shoot the news 3 times a week, but now it is done “Live to tape” which means no editing. We expanded the news on to the HCAM.TV website and created a Twitter and Facebook pages. Our Facebook page has over 670 “likes”, the most of any Hopkinton organization. Our staff has changed faces as well. We have Stephanie Kane as our News Producer, added segment producers Dr. Jim Kenealy with “To Your Health”, Town Manager Norman Khumalo and Assistant Geri Holland with “The Selectmen Preview” and Chief Rick Flannery with “Chief’s Beat”.

I can’t end this without mentioning the many interns that have come and gone through our doors, Andy Ritz, Peter Bransfield, Lindsay Tonelli, Nimish and Courtney Taylor that spent numerous hours filming, editing and writing packages, copy and segments.

I can’t believe it has been two months since my last posting, however, I can see why. Things have been very busy around HCAM these past 2 month for me. As we started our new broadcast season, new shows like Absolutely Yoga and The Gathering are now up and running as well as a new season of sports. Football and Volleyball continue to be covered regularly and we added 3 post season playoff games for Volleyball, which the Hiller girls mad it to the South Sectional Finals…the furthest they have gone and finishing with their best record ever. Another new venue to the HCAM line up is the HPTA. Yep, that is right, the HPTA will hold there meetings throughout the year, in which each meeting hosts a Guest speaker on various topics. The first speaker did a presentation on The Homework Wars, which provided tips and insight to parents coping with the stress of student work loads and lack of enthusiasm of students to do their homework. The next meeting will be a live broadcast that will deal with college funding.

As the holiday season quickly approaches…we are in high gear with in studio and location shoots almost everyday of the week. John Ritz took on the arduous undertaking of cover 5 School Holiday Concerts and the Holiday Concert at St. Johns. We also covered The High School Play “The Music Man” and the Middle School Play “A Christmas Carol” and The Chamber Of Commerce Holiday Party where they honored Police Chief Tom Irvin and HBA President Ken Driscoll for their Distinguished Service to the Town of Hopkinton.

Last month, we unveiled a new set for the show “Physician Focus” which gives the entire show a new, crisp look by adding a lighted sign, new carpet, flats and more lights. Another new sport will be added this winter to the line up, swimming. Coach Bryan King has rustled up crew to bring the action of Hiller Swimming and Diving to your television. This is a first for HCAM and we wish coach and the team good luck.

Last, I would like to welcome all the new volunteers that went through the last workshops and I hope to see them crewing soon. I would also like to welcome Karen Davis and Mary Lee, who have taken on volunteer staffing roles. Karen will be handling creating, posting and managing the station bulletin board, both online and television. Mary Lee is taking on the duties of coordinating Studio Promotions, both on the bulletin board and on the playback schedule.

I’m sure I’m forgeting something…as you all know me, it’s busy, busy, busy…and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year!

I sure can. We just covered our first football game of the season at our new digs on the Brand New Press box on the Bleachers. We covered our first ever Soccer game, a double header no less. Volleyball is well under way with 3 cameras now instead of 2, we are just getting started and ESL’s Open Mic Kicked off their Season with feature performer Jeanette Palmer. Future events include Enter Stage Left production’s of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and “12 Angry Men”. This is going to be the first of regular covering of their plays from here on out. Speaking of plays, The Hopkinton High School Will be performing “The Music Man” in November and The Hopkinton Middle School is doing “A Christmas Carol” in December. Also in December, ESL’s original “Christmas Traditions” will be back and will be covered again.

On top of all these fine productions, HCAM will be producing a couple new shows, both in and out of the studio. Just finishing pre-production is our new Public Safety show, Guns and Hoses. Where the Police and Fire Chiefs will highlight members and events of there department and provided information and tips of taking it safe. The Women’s Art Forum will be a new show, hosted by local artist, Geri Holland. She will introduce Hopkinton to a wide range of Women Artist from town and the area and showcase their talents.

Well, that’s a ton of stuff for now and more to come. Please feel free to leave me a comment or a suggestion for a show.

With the Concerts on the Common Series done and the recent promos that we have shot around town, I found a link that is quite useful and would like to share it with you. Please comment and discuss it.

I’m a photographer, not a terrorist

I sit at my desk today, like most days this summer and feel depressed for not getting ahead with the work that requires a PC. You see, as we store more and more shows electronically, we find the need to add hard drive space. So we bought some new terabyte drives to handle the job for the next year or so. Well all of a sudden the drives don’t recognize when you connect them, so you have to restart the computer. That’s not too bad, but when the computers lock up during shut down and/or restart, it starts to become irritating. Even worst, after you get it to restart, the computer doesn’t recognize the drive…

Anyway, it becomes frustrating more so, especially when I laid out a plan to be caught up and organize before the September push for new productions. Thank goodness for a great boss that is seeing all the problems and doesn’t take me for a slacker.

Well, enough about me. It’s August, the sun is shining and here at HCAM we are so pleased for the new season starting in October, Returning series like Senior Upbeat, Physician Focus, Attitude, Poetry in Motion…just to name a few. New shows will include, Absolutely Yoga, an one hour monthly show that goes through many rigors or yoga exercise. Guns and Hoses will be our new public safety show, hosted by the Chiefs of the Fire and Police Departments. We will be welcoming the Womens’ Art Forum in October, where Geri Holland will introduce us to local women of a wide variety of arts.

Sports will be starting in September and we will be bringing Girls’ Volleyball from the athletic center and we will be covering the Varsity Football games from the newly named grid iron, Dave Hughes Field. Fall will also bring us plays from the Middle School and High School and the last I heard the Middle School will be doing a Christmas Carol and the High School is doing The Music Man.

So, stay tuned for more to come from HCAM.

Well, if not Hollywood, Boston at least. I had the honor and priveledge this past weekend to work on a short film as part of a 48 Hour Film festival Project. http://www.48hourfilm.com/

Our group, New Tricks Productions, headed by producer Karen Webb, picked the Genre of a western on Friday night. The writing team made up a script by 11pm, the cast and crew gathered at 6:30 am at a sheep farm in Upton, which fit the bill for this crazy film. I had the priveledge to run the primary camera and got to work very closely with Paul Champlin, who started of as Director of Photography and wound up Directing, which took a huge load off the shoulders of Dawn Anderson, who wrote, starred, edited and everything else you can imagine.

Ok, the story. 2 elderly wool rustlers, played by Dawn Anderson and Mary Scarlotta-Rowe, would invade helpless sheep farms and steal wool to support their knitting habits. Local farmers contacted the sheriff, but had to deal with his Deputy, Marty Quinanni, (yep that was a character name we had to use). Anyway, the deputy plants an undercover agent on a farm, which happens to be the one the bandits raid next. Well, the girls were almost clear with bags of wool until a grand prize cuaght Girts eye, an Alpaca. Yep they got greedy and went for it, only to get a surprise and get in a tussle with the deputy, who got the best of them.

That’s the Reader’s Digest version of it, I don’t want to give away the good stuff.

This was my first film of any kind that I worked on and let me tell you, it is nothing like television. I had so much fun working with a creative, talented and darn right professional bunch of people.

Ok, I know it’s just 42 degrees outside, but you should know I’m not talking about the weather.

Winter sports are over and we didn’t see any post season play at home, but with pitchers and catchers reporting for duty in Florida, it’s time to think Baseball and Lacrosse. We will be covering the Hillers Girls Varsity Lacrosse again for our second season and Boys Baseball team for it’s third.

Spring also brings us a middle school musical. This year it will be Grease. The politics kick into gear as the budgets have to get done and ready to be submitted to Annual Town Meeting. After Town Meeting comes the Annual Election that will bring new faces to the Selectmen and School Committee. HCAM has expanded it’s governmental coverage by adding the Planning Board Meetings to it’s line up.

A couple new studio shows will be coming soon this Spring. A cooking show, The Gathering and an exercise show, Absolute Yoga will make there debut in April and May.

Lastly, we launched a new look and new features to hcam.tv today. The Shoot, which is a collection of pictures from around town taken by me, Jim, Casey, Kathleen Culler and Dick Bartlett. News, yes I said it, News. We will be running stories from the governmental meetings, sports and other events around town. Streaming video is now added on top of the on demand video of  programs. You can tune into HCAM programing from any pc or mac, from anywhere in the world and catch our programming. We have also added indexing to all the governmental meetings, so if you are interested in only one part of a particular meeting, click on the agenda item and it will start to play at that point. Oh yea, did I mention Facebook?

Go check out www.HCAM.tv and find out.

As I sit in my office today listen to Jim explain to me the Hits and Page Requests and other cool things about hcam.tv, he mentioned that he had 27 request for his blog and that I had 21. Now, I can’t stand hearing how more popular he is than me and I know that he knows I know that I can’t stand it.  So, off to the site I go and click on my blog link 20 times to boost the count, and I realize that it has been over 2 months since I blogged. This can only mean 2 things. 1, I’m lazy or 2, I’m really busy. Well, I hope my readers realize it’s the latter.

Shows are taking off with regular tapings, like Senior Upbeat, Attitude!, All About Hopkinton and some new ones are just coming around, like You’re Hired, The Gathering and Mzz Bzz Muze Time. Sports are still going strong with Boys and Girls Varsity Basketball, which covers all home games with a crew of 8 to 9 as talent, cameras and techs, and Varsity Hockey with a dedicated crew of John and Andy Ritz heading up that production for their first time.

As most may know, we had our share of some tough weather that cancelled some tapings like, Wake Up and Smell the Poetry, St. John’s Christmas Concert and a few sporting events. Although the games get rescheduled, some things couldn’t. The good news is that there are always thing going on in town and more and more people are requesting us to cover them.

A couple of things will be the Metrowest Symphony Orchestra performing in March and April new governmental coverage of the Planning Board meetings.

Last, I want to take this minute to thank all of our volunteers, who take their free time to bring great programs and events to the people of Hopkinton and beyond.

So, it’s been a bit since I posted last and it is so overdue. My first excuse was the blog was down due to new upgrades to our web server ( see Jim’s Blog about that stuff ), but now I can’t use that anymore. I’ve been real busy with a lot of pre production work for our LIVE Telethon last week, a Live Debate between the State Rep. candidates, Saturday Morning Poetry and our location shoots for Open Mic, Volleyball and Football.

So now, with that all behind me, I will do some updating. Basketball and hockey are about to begin and we have added more crew to cover these. We just covered our first away football game on Thanksgiving and what a game it was with the Hillers comeback from a deficit.

The Middle School Drama Club did their Fall drama of The Odyssey and for the first time, we covered the High School Drama Ensemble’s Musical of Beauty and the Beast.

In the studio, we added a weekly show, Sunday Sermon Series with John Rexford, who recreates the sermon given at the Woodville Baptist Church on the Sunday previously.

We recently had a a class of producers finish their last workshop and already had some return to work cameras at football, a play and a studio shoot. I hope to see more of them as they improve their skills.

Gazebo Razing