Michigan Alliance for Community Media members traveled up north for the Fall 2017 membership meeting on Friday, September 15, 2017. The first station we toured was UpNorth Media Center. The home of community media in northwest Lower Michigan. There mission is, “We connect our community to people around the globe through the region’s only public- and government-access television stations and online video streaming source. Using state-of-the-art technology, we teach people how to use video and other media to celebrate local culture, share community information, and provide educational content for the world to see.”
The UpNorth Media Center is hosted and operated by the Land Information Access Association (LIAA), a nonprofit community service organization. LIAA has extensive experience in working with citizens, local governments and other nonprofits all across Michigan, helping to expand civic engagement and build better communities through participation, education, information and the effective use of technology.
Some really neat tolls UpNorth Media are using:
- Better Impact to mange and schedule volunteers via a client portal list serve
- LUMIX DSLR cameras for longer capture times
- Song xd cams
- Vaddio remote studio cameras
- And they edit on Adobe Premiere CC
Milward from MPACT also mentioned that the City of Monroe contracted LIAA for Resilientmonroe.org.
Our next stop was the Traverse Bay Area Career Tech Center Film & New Media classroom where students learn all aspects of planning and executing effective visual communications while mastering the most powerful medium of our time — film and new media.
A few take aways from the stop include; instructor Tom Mill’s pro-tip to teach the students a fun acronym; to make them better producer! He uses the word “FEW” as an easy way for students to recall that Focus, Exposure and White balance are the most import things to get right on each shoot. They also have an EBR grading system, which stands for Evidence Based Recording. Meaning if students can show that they have mastered the skill at hand, then they pass.
The Film and New Media courses offers the opportunity to:
- Write a script
- Direct a scene
- Light and shoot a scene
- Edit picture and sound
- Use the latest video and audio equipment
Film and New media is a career/technical course that provides students with an introduction and basic overview of film and new media production skills and professions. As students create films throughout the year, they will explore the many key disciplines of filmmaking. The primary areas include Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production – as well as some film theory essentials.
This course is designed NOT JUST FOR students pursuing jobs skills or pursuing advanced university or trade school courses in the film and new media field, but anyone interested in learning to communicate with one of the most powerful communication tools to date; on-line video.
We pulled over for a wonderful pit stop at MOOmers Homemade Ice Cream. After beating the hear with a tasty ice cream cone we continued on to UpNorth Live WPBN Channels 7&4 providing Northern Michigan with the latest news, weather and sports. Our station tour guide was Michelle Nemmers the Managing Internet Editor. She introduced use to many staff members who were all getting ready for the evening news show. We had the pleasure of meeting Mark Watkins the meteorologist as he showed us his weather graphics for that nights show. We also learned they use JVC remote cameras, LiveU packs and more!
Our last stop of the day was at Interlochen Public Radio. A listener-supported broadcast service of Interlochen Center for the Arts, Interlochen Public Radio is home to two distinct radio stations serving northwest lower Michigan with music, news and culture from the region and the world – every day, 24 hours a day. IPR started in 1928 and one of their Charter member, Helen, helped form NPR. There is a nice photo of her in the lobby.
IPR hosts digital editing boot camps for a weekend or a whole week. Camps teaches basic of producing quality audio stories. Students final projects include producing a Voxpoo – a voice of the people audio file where everyone is asked the same question and then the answers are edited to be side by side. They also offer a transom program in public radio, which is a nine week workshop. IPR uses Adobe Audition CC but teaches Hindenburg as well. The IPR facility is absolutely stunning, tucked back in the woods with high vault ceilings and tons of natural light. A beautiful setting to create high quality radio!
We also discussed music licensinga bunch at IPR. I thought I would share this information from the National ACM Conference and Trade Show in Minneapolis, MN in July 2017: NECAT Network.org- http://www.necatnetwork.org/ hosted a Music Licensing session. Here is the powerpoint and handouts: http://www.allcommunitymedia.org/annualconference/schedule
Refer to chart. “Start with the Chart”: https://schd.ws/hosted_files/allianceforcommunitymedia2017ann/c2/NECAT%20Music%20Use%20Chart.pdf
We finished the day with a lovely dinner at the Franklin pub. Very tasty!! The 2018 station tour will be in Monroe, MI. More info TBA, but we hope to see you all there!
Michigan Alliance for Community Media 