New Video Training, Crew Opportunities, and Judges Needed

By Lauren Horton, General Manager

Take a look at what’s been happening lately at Westford CAT!

Workshop Openings: School Winter Break is upon us this week, and there are still two spots open in this week’s Youth Video Production Workshop where, in the span of three days, students will shoot video, create a sequence, and run production for an in-studio game show. The workshop starts this Tuesday, February 19, and continues on Wednesday, February 20, and Thursday, February 21 from 10am – noon. It’s limited to eight students. A $45 registration fee covers all three days. Students must be 10 years or older to attend.

Camera Crew Needed: In January, we added 13 meetings to our Government Access Channels and online video library.  That’s a lot of meetings, and there are more on the schedule this week, as the town prepares for March’s annual Town Meeting. This week we are a little short handed on both Tuesday’s Finance Meeting at the Millennium at 7 p.m. and Wednesday, February 20 when the Board of Selectmen holds a public meeting at the Stony Brook School beginning 7:30 p.m. If you can assist us with camera or graphics or audience support for either of these meetings, or for next month’s Annual Town Meeting on Saturday March 23, please call the station at 978-692-7152.  

Producer Training Begins on 2/26: Westford CAT is offering a new round of free Producer Workshops for all those interested in creating programs for Westford CAT’s local channels and website. Producer Orientation is Tuesday, February 26 at 6 p.m. During orientation, attendees will get a tour and demo of the studio and video edit suite. They will also see the equipment Westford CAT makes available to the public to create programs. Find out how to check out recording equipment, book studio time, and use the computer systems in the edit suite to put the finishing touches on a video program by attending this orientation.

Depending on whether you are interested in recording your program in the studio or on location, a choice of two classes will be offered during each of the following Tuesday evenings that cover both the planning and technical aspects of producing informative and entertaining programs:

March 5:    1) Planning Your Production 2) Operating a Canon XH-A1 HD Camera

March 12:   1) Studio Production Planning 2) On Location Lighting and Audio

March 19:  1) Studio Directing with the Tricaster 2) Intro to PC Video Editing

March 26:  1) Studio Audio  2) Intro to Mac Video Editing

April 2:      1) Studio Lighting 2) Animation with Adobe After Effects

April 9:        1) Studio Chroma Key  2) Animation with Motion on Mac

All classes run from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. To register for any of these classes, go on line at westfordcat.org, send an email to westfordcat@westfordcat.org, or call the station at 978-692-7152.

Judges Needed: We entered 13 programs into this year’s Alliance for Community Media Northeast Video Festival, which takes place on April 13th at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. We also agreed to participate in the judging entries to the Sports Programming category and we are looking for volunteers to help judge the entries. We’ll be getting together this Thursday from 2-6 p.m. and Friday from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. We’ll provide the popcorn, you provide the comments.

Hope to see or hear from you soon!