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!
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!
This semester our first-year students will be producing 16 thirty-second commercial spots over the next couple of months (2 per week). The goal is to train students in the entire production process, from pitching an idea, right through to production and post. This isn’t all about just running out the door with a camera and shooting, but about the planning, logistics that need to go into making a production happen.
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 regular semester has finished, and our Broadcast students are current involved in Practicum, where the Broadcast Center turns into a leaving, breathing Television station.
Television & Video Production students perform the roles of:
- News Camera (aka “Shooters”)
- News Editors
- Graphics and Animation production
- Newscast production (Director, Assistant Director, Technical Director, Audio, Floor Director, etc.)
Our Broadcast Journalism students are responsible for the stories and interviews that make up the content of our weekly BCIT Magazine production.
Practicum is an intensive 4-week process that ensures that all students get exposure to all aspects of Television & Video Production in a live environment, with the challenges and deadlines that exists in a real station.
Practicum begins another first this year, as BCIT Broadcast has installed two video servers as we move closer to gracefully retiring our tape infrastructure.
Our Facilis server is an 18 terrabyte storage server that provides us with almost 1400 hours of storage for our edit bays. The Omneon server is a play-to-air server which takes the final edited stories and allows playback through our control rooms.
Most of our aquisition and editing facilities are currently using digital tape formats, however we’re moving towards a totally tapeless workflow that allows us to go from acquisition to broadcast without any physical media (aside from memory cards) involved in the process.
Tape, old and busted...
Our Television & Video Production advisory committee, composed of broadcast and film professionals from Western Canada are very supportive of us making these changes.
Memory cards - new hotness...
Employers demand students and alumni trained in digital and tapeless production technology. BCIT delivers.
All of our new commercial productions from our Term 2 Television & Video Production class have been uploaded to YouTube.
We’ll have the HD versions of these commercials coming to Vimeo in the near future as well (they’re uploaded in standard-def 16:9 widescreen on YouTube for the time being).
Standard Def Commercials ( January 19 to March 11 )
Hi-Def Commercials ( March 16 to April 8 )
Hi-Def on Vimeo
Delta Community Animal Shelter from BCIT Television on Vimeo.
Running Room from BCIT Television on Vimeo.
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