Thanks to all of our students and staff who volunteered their Saturday to help produce the live streaming event for the FIRST Lego League BC Championships on Saturday, January 14th.

This is the second year running where the Television & Video Production students have provided a live stream of the event for friends and family to enjoy!  This year we had viewers as far away as Europe watching the competition.

Be sure to check out our photo gallery of the event!  You can also check out the complete event coverage on Justin.tv.

We have more live projects coming up in the near future, so subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow our Twitter account, @bcittv to be notified of our new productions!

Sambujak Productions is currently working on post-production of their upcoming project “Trees”, which will be screening on Friday, December 9th.  Keep an eye on the Production Website, and check them out on Facebook and Twitter!

Come out and meet us at the BIG info session & Program Expo!

If you’re interested in seeing what the BCIT Television and Video Production program has to offer, drop by BCIT’s Burnaby campus on Wednesday, March 2nd from 5-8pm.

The entire Broadcast Department will be set up in TownSquare A/B so visitors can meet our students and faculty, and have a look at the Television and Video Production program’s P2-HD production workflow combined with our new Broadcast Pix and EVS replay unit for live production!

By strange coincidence, the first two commercials this year are alcohol-related!

For a bit of background, each student production company (usually group of 5) is required to produce two 30-second commercials this term, and we stipulate that at least one of them must be a real client (to give the project a bit more of a reality-check).

First up was a project for Heineken Beer which illustrates the old saying about, boy meets girl, boy chooses the wrong beer, other boy who chooses the “right” beer gets the girl.

Second up, was a spot for Industry Bar & Grill in Richmond selling on the idea that no matter what might happen by accident, it’s all good for this bar’s patrons!

Switching gears slightly with the first-year Television & Video Production students, we’ve moved from training on live multi-camera production to single-camera electronic field production (EFP).  Check out our Gallery for more photos!

In order to develop these skills, our first-year faculty members, John Mills, David Griffiths, and Ashif Jivraj decided to model a small production for our students and shoot a 30 second commercial for Coast Mountain Bus Company (part of Translink).

This production process is not just about heading out to a location with a crew and a camera, but included everything from site surveys, to obtaining the necessary insurance and contracts to put this production together.  Make no mistake, this is a lot of work, and our students will be doing the same on their own productions!

The process introduced both sets of first-year students to the skills and on-set coordination necessary to work in the film and television industry.  While we’re not a film school (and we would argue that we are better), many of the same skill-sets apply no matter if you’re working with digital technology or film stock.

In this case, we are shooting on Panasonic HPX-300 P2 HD cameras.  The first day of shooting was in AVC-Intra 100 at 1080-24PN, and the second day in DVCProHD 720-24PN, just for the sake of trying something different.

The students will be producing their own commercials in HD in the coming weeks, check back for more updates and the final products that are uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube!

The First Lego League BC Provincial Championships were a nice opening live event production for the BCIT Television & Video Production students this year!

We had a great group of volunteers who donated their time on Friday and Saturday to produce the event.  Our students were doing everything from running the cables to switching, directing, running the cameras and streaming the signal online.  Check out the photo gallery for some behind the scenes production action!

We had a few technical issues with our internet feed that resulted in the quality being lower than we had hoped for, however a fix is in the works and we’re already looking forward to our next live event.  Stay tuned!

Thousands of children live in orphanages without ever leaving and even sometimes stay and work there because they have not received a good enough education to move ahead in life and adoption is not legal- therefore, there’s never even a chance of them having a real family. Your help will allow the organization to provide a clean, safe and nurturing environment for the kids, because for now, there is no other option.

Your support for this project would be so very appreciated! Partial proceeds will be donated to the Littlest Lamb Orphanage as they’ve so far been supportive in giving us interviews when we get there. Additional proceeds will go towards our project shedding light on this very important issue.

It’s a big project and it’s ambitious, but we’re working hard to make the most of this documentary because it’s a topic that needs attention!

Tickets are $10. Tickets will be available through Mariam and Andrea, as well as at the door between 7:30pm and 11pm.

Location:

BCIT Television & Video Production students will be producing a live webcast of this year’s First Lego League BC Provincial Championships, held at the BCIT Burnaby Campus on Saturday, January 15, 2011.

The FIRST LEGO League is a robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds, which is designed to get children excited about science and technology — and teach them valuable employment and life skills.

Tune in to our live stream URL to watch the action beginning at 9am PST!

Students have been out practising the camera, audio, and composition skills they’ve learned over the last few weeks to produce short segments about some of the trades and technical students at BCIT.  We’re looking for proper technical control of the camera (focus, aperture, white balance, audio levels), proper use of microphones (which mic to use, where to place it for optimum pickup), and how to compose shots to make it interesting for viewers.

After shooting, we head back to the broadcast centre to spend the afternoon in the edit suite with Final Cut Pro, putting all of the footage together so we can do some critiquing in class and learn about what worked and what didn’t.

A fairly busy day, but great hands-on experience!