June Producers Club Recap

Our first Producers Club event was a big hit! The workshop took place on Thursday, June 8 in the studio at BCAT. We had about 20 current producer's and community members turn out for the event.

Communications Specialist Ben Vinar and SWTV Community TV Administrator Dietrich Nissen did a demo of two different types of handheld gimbal systems, one of which is available for checkout at BCAT, as well as talk about tips for interviewing on camera.

You can watch the video recording of the workshop in its entirety here!

Our next Producers Club workshop will take place on Thursday, August 10, with a social "hour" at 6:30 p.m. followed by the presentation at 7 p.m. Producers Club is FREE and open to all Bloomington and SWTV residents. 

If you are interested in attending our next workshop, please be sure to RSVP for the event by calling or emailing Ben Vinar. Light refreshments will be provided.

BCAT Welcomes New Members

BCAT would like to extend a big welcome to some new members. Say hello to George Rerat and his son George.  George and George are SWTV area residents, and signed up as members of BCAT at the end of June. They are currently in the middle of taking BCAT's production classes, including Studio Production, Digital Camera, and Post-Production Editing. They are still in the early planning stages for their show, but some ideas they have include George Jr. interviewing employees and highlighting his favorite Minnesota businesses.

We also welcome new member Nancy Ulen-Karter, a Bloomington resident who has big plans for her public access show. The title of her show is Okay, What Can I Do? Nancy hopes to connect viewers who are looking to get involved in their community with local businesses and nonprofits that are looking for volunteer help. She is very excited about the opportunity to create her own production, and even has a website and logo for her show in the works. Welcome to BCAT George, George and Nancy!

BCAT HD Channel

If you are a resident of Bloomington and a CenturyLink Prism subscriber, we have some news for you. As of June 13, 2017, you can now view BCAT's channel in high definition!

Simply tune to channel 8716 to see the HD broadcast or 8216 if you prefer standard definition.

Also, as a reminder, we now can accept HD programs for playback. If you create an HD file of your show for YouTube or other social media, you can just submit that same file to BCAT. You no longer need to convert your show to a letterboxed SD version.

If you are a Comcast customer, you can still view these HD shows in 16 x 9 aspect ratio on Channel 16 if you have a widescreen television, they are just down-converted to standard definition.

If you have questions about any of the BCAT channels or program playback, please contact us.

Our newest Producer Spotlight segment features SWTV producer Lisa Butts. Lisa is the host and producer of the show Let's Learn to Get Along.

She has been doing her public access TV show for over 20 years and continues to create new programming on a monthly basis.

"My show is about bringing people together from all nationalities, incomes and backgrounds," says Lisa. She often has guests on her show who share their own life's lessons and stories, as well as occasional musical guests. "And I even do shows by myself which I call Truth," she adds.

You can watch the full video here, and catch Let's Learn to Get Along on BCAT, Mondays and Thursdays at 9 p.m.

July 2017

Contact BCAT

Ben Vinar

Communications Specialist

952-563-4980

bvinar@bloomingtonmn.gov

For class information, studio and channel schedules, and more, visit: www.bcat16.org.

BCAT Hours

Mon. - Thurs., 1 - 9:30 p.m.

Every other Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Visit our website to see what weekends we are open.

Quick Tips

Here's another quick lighting tip. If you're purposely wanting to shoot in very low lighting, but the lighting is so low that you can't see much on camera, there are a couple options to remedy that.

First, use the features in the camera. Open up the iris wider until the exposure is what you're looking for. This opens up the aperture in the lens, which allows more light into the camera.

Another in-camera option is to bump up the shutter speed. However, be careful with that. Generally, the rule of thumb is to keep the shutter speed around twice the frame rate you're shooting in. For example, if you're shooting in 30 frames per second (fps), you will want to keep your shutter around 1/60. This keeps the video nice and smooth, and prevents it from looking jittery or wobbling.

After you've opened up the iris and potentially the shutter, your last option is gain. If you're shooting on an ENG style camera, you can bring up the gain from low to medium or high.

If you're shooting on a DSLR, you could bump up the ISO (which stands for International Organization for Standardization) number. ISO and gain are basically the same thing. 

As with the shutter speed, you also have to be careful with bringing the gain/ISO up too high, as it will add an unwanted graininess to your footage. Take a close look at the examples to see the difference.

Your BEST option would be to add light. "But wait, why would I want to ADD light if I'm trying to make my shot look dark?" The answer is because you can always darken your shot with the camera settings without loosing image quality.

If you add enough light to your scene to the point where you can see everything clearly, but it's then too bright for how you want the shot to look, simply close down the iris or even add a neutral density (ND) filter to make the shot as dark as you want.

Questions? Let us know!

Mark Your Calendars!

ACM Conference/Awards

July 12-14, Minneapolis

Producers Club

Thursday, August 10, 6:30 p.m.