What a night!
First off was a going-away party for both our Associate Dean, Brian Antonson and his administrative assistant Janet Wadsworth. Plenty of good stories, good friends and good food. Thanks to everyone who was involved both planning and holding this event. I’m sure it left everyone with fond memories.
Also tonight (as if the party wasn’t work enough), we had our Big Info Session, where all of BCIT’s programs show up and show off to the general public. The broadcast department had some great displays up (would it be too much to say we stole the show?).
Part of the Television Booth at the BCIT Big Info Session
This was the first public performance of our Broadcast Pix production system in combination with our iMac edit stations and Panasonic HPX-300 P2-HD cameras.
This was also the first time that we had an end-to-end digital workflow.
- Footage was shot on the Panasonic HPX-300 P2-HD cameras
- After aquisition, the footage gets loaded onto the iMac Final Cut Pro edit station via P2-reader and a USB interface
- The finished edits are pushed via ethernet to the clipstore on the Broadcast Pix system and into our live show.
For the most part, it worked flawlessly – just a few hiccups when the power went out (note to student editors: “save often”). Looking forward to our next live event in the second week of April when we take our class out on location to do a live show for a client!
More HD production this week!
First up was a commercial for Gold’s Gym – the “under glass” part comes from the location – in the racquetball courts at BCIT (the gym was busy). Inner (and outer) strength can show itself in many ways, and a bench full of cheerleaders (who are eyeing the athletic hero) feel the earth move from an unlikely source.
Shooting on-location offers some unique learning experiences. Shooting on location in poor weather offers additional learning experiences… While we didn’t get much in the way of snow for our Olympic experience, mother nature is making up for lost time with rain. And a lot of it…
Today we ventured forth with a production for “The Running Room”, which illustrates a strong motivational factor for a lonely athlete to encourage him to do more running. Extra points if you can guess the concept!
Following our successful tests last week of our new, portable Broadcast Pix production system, this week we trained our first year students on it.
We used the portable system to successfully replicate the same “Studio 1 Live” show that we produced earlier in the year with a full control room, audio room, and VTR room within the broadcast centre. The possibilities are very interesting indeed…
Had a chance to get our new Broadcast Pix switcher up and running last week! Our HD gear is commissioned now as well, so we’re going to be starting HD productions in the next few weeks!
We’re starting the training process in order to get students out doing live multi-camera switched productions in the near future! Students will be looking for production opportunities (read: non-profit projects) soon!
A Productive day!
With a small group of volunteers, we assembled our five new Panasonic HPX-300 P2-HD camera packages! Starting next term we’re going to be moving to HD productions and tapeless workflows.
Post production will be one one of our new Mac Pro edit suites which are loaded with both Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Studio, in addition to the Adobe suite of products to give TV & Video Production students the widest possible range of options for their post-production workflow.
The TV & Video Production program will also be shifting focus somewhat – in addition to our single-camera digital produtions (film style, but without the film!), we will be producing more live event programming (such as sporting events, theatre, music, etc).
To accomplish this, we’ve purchased a portable Broadcast Pix production package that we can take out to events to enable us to do multi-camera switched live programming. We will be looking for non-profit community events where BCIT students can bring their production skills to the project and provide clients with high quality end-products.
Exciting times!
