6.0.A SWCSR 4-23-2020Sherburne Wright Cable Commission
Production Report
April 17, 2020
Production Update
Big Lake -Fire Department Open House
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Big Lake’s Fire Department held itsannual open house on October 13, 2019. Which
was my third day of employment under the commission. Takinga sound system and camera,
after getting set up and fighting through some rain.I was able to film the main demos, with a
little time left over to capture some highlights, like a ride in the back of a firetruck.
I then took the footage and made it into two videos, the first being a short highlight video,
and the second was the whole program. We passed the highlight video over to the fire
department,who posted it on their Facebook page.The community seemed to enjoy it, as it
quickly gathered several likes and even a few shares. Itwound up being an excellentway to wrap
upand archivethe day's events.It also doubles as a way of promoting the eventfor next year.
Delano -Senior Center Yoga
Earlier in the year,the senior center requested we come in and film a yoga
session;that way,when the yoga instructor is unable to attend.They would have
something to play for the seniors who came, little did we know at the time what was to
come.So when we filmed our second yoga video at the end of February and got them
both on YouTube. How beneficial it was to Delano’s Senior citizens when the stay at
home order went into effect,and they could continueto do yoga at home.
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Delano –Old Fashion Christmas Highlights
Old Fashion Christmas is one of the busiest events we have during the Christmas season.
SWTV operates two sets of sound systems spread out across three different locations. One set is
used to fill the streets with Christmas music,andthe other is used for various bands that come in
and out. Being the only one on-site, I continuously bouncebetween units to make adjustments
and check-in.This doesn’t leave me a lot of time to carry around a big tripod and camera.Which
is where the gimbal and the corresponding mirrorless camera comes into play.
A gimbal isa camera stabilizer; it uses motors
and weight balancing to keep the camerastill
regardless of movement. A mirrorless camera, on the
other hand, looks like a photographer's camera, it just
has swappable lenses, and shoots video.I’ve included a
picture of the exact setup, so you can see what my
camera and gimbal look like.
Stepping away from our usual programming,
we’ve slowly been implementing a new type of video
more oriented towards social media. Using the gimbal to film, the best footageis used to create a
short highlight video. If you’d like to see an example, feel free to watchit here on our YouTube
channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhjQXTEkqGc
The goal of these videos are to give a quick highlight of the event to the community.
Hopefully, giving viewers that, in the moment, “I want to be there feeling.” These videos tend to
spread like wildfire on social media with people seeing the short clips and sharing them. I hope
to continue to use these to promote events and help cities grow their attendees.
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SWTV –Channel ID’s
New channel ID’s are coming!These will be used to display information in between our
regularly scheduled programming, letting viewers know they are watching SWTV. It features
time-lapse scenery from our ten citiesand will replace some generic ones on the channel.So far,
I’ve filmed two sunsets, one in Buffalo and the other in
Delano.
In the coming weeks, I will be working my way
around the remaining cities capturing several locations at
various times of the day. I currentlyhave two more ideas
in mind, one of Rockford’s railroad bridge over the river,
and the Monticello Swan feeding area. Please, let me
know if you have any recommended spots to film from!
Dassel/Cokato Business Expo
Cokato’s Chamber of Commerce puts on an annual expo for the cities of both Dassel and
Cokato, featuring many businesses from all surrounding
communities.To highlight this, for many years,SWTV has done
interviews with the help of ambassadors from each of Dassel &
Cokato’srespective royalty/ambassador programs. In addition to
our annual video, the DC Expo was the second event to benefit
from the use of a gimbal. While the interviewswereshot with the
usual tripod and camera,for the highlight video,weused the previously mentioned setup.
The gimbal itself is also quite the attention grabber; I had several adults, teens, and kids
approach me at the DC Expo, to ask about the gimbal and who I was with. Creatinga perfect
opportunity to talk about
who we are and what we
do. Now that we have
business cards, we can
distribute them as we speak
to potential volunteers.
Buffalo –Kites
This, to my knowledge, is a new event for SWTV
and is only in its second year. Buffalo’s Chamber of
Commerce has started organizingan annual kite event,
where hundreds of flyers bring in kites ofvariousshapes
and sizes.Even withoutthe kites,there are tonsof
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activities to do on the ice, such as dog sledding, whereas you
can see, I got up close and madefriends with a few of the pups.
I’ve gathered enough footage from this event for a
highlight video thatthey can use to help promote it next year. I
was also able to capture two interviews for a shortprogram, one
was with the main organizers,the other with one of the flyers.I
had hoped to obtainmore interviews, and catch The Mayor, but the kites/eventswere spread so
far across the lake.Between walking to each station, kite, activity, and back to the office to swap
equipment, I just didn’t have enough time.
Cokato –Akerlund Documentary
We currently have two large projects in the
works, the firstis the AkerlundStudio in Cokato.
They are currently in the process of becoming a
national historic landmark, which would make it one
of only 2600across the United States. The goal is to
use the documentary to show its national significance
and make the community more aware of its existence.
Akerlund’s collection is made up of about
12,000 glass plates, and while they’ve all been digitized, it’s still mind-blowing to see the
physical collection and hear the stories. A majority of which are over 100 years old and stand in
a studio with almost all original equipment. As part of this project, we will also make a separate
promotional piece with some of the B-Roll I plan to capture on the gimbal.
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I’m looking forward to continuing interviews and hearing stories from some of the older
community members after we get through this pandemic. We also have plans to work with actors
from the local theatre group to recreate some live-action shots to use as B-Roll.
Delano –Royalty
The other significant project we are working on is the history of Delano’s Royalty
program. The organization has been around for 52 years and has gone through a lot of changes
over the years. This video will focus on the history, how it’s empowering women today and why
young women should run for candidacy.
We invitedthe current ambassadors,sponsors, and even the very first princess from her
run 52 years agoin for an interview. As a thank you for theirtimeand for letting me borrow the
52-yearphoto collectionto create B-Roll. We also put together a recruitment video for them,
using some footage taken from the previous summer. So far, I’ve cut the whole project down
from about ten hours of footage to two and a half, now it’s just onto arranging it into a story.
Rockford -City Council Graphics
As many of you know,Bill has been making his way around to cities, upgrading the
equipment to HDMI. With these
new upgrades, we have also
started updating graphics in a
few of the cities. Here’s
Rockford’s updated graphics.
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Dassel –COVID 19 PSAs
Ourlatest production wassix PSAs at the request of TheMayor. In this informative
series, The Mayorwalks the public throughcity plans and ordinances that will be goinginto
effect.He alsotalked about ways to receive assistance for a variety
of needs, before finally endingwith tips to prevent, identify, and
keep up with the latest on COVID-19.
SWTV - Business Card and Logo
As we transition into HD content with the YouTube Channel and look beyond, everything ahead
requires larger resolutions. So, I took some time to recreate the SWTV logo as we did not have
the original project file anymore. After hunting down fonts, adjusting the scaling, and learning to
recreate/draw some of the shapes. We’ve created a
near replica of our logo in Illustrator, meaning it can
be scaled up or down infinitely without losing any
quality.
This new scaling technique has already been
used in our 4k highlight videos, as well as the
previously alluded to business cards. More recently,
we got the big logo prints back from the print shop and
now have the logo proudly displayed on our door. It has already helped in making our building a
lot easier for people to find.
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Delano –Veterans Day Program
When I was 12 years old, I met my predecessor down on the gymnasium floor at
Delano’s annual Veterans Day Program. Itwas a few weeks after this that I would begin
volunteering with SWTV. As it has been eight years since we filmed one, I brought the
cameragear down to the school for the event. From the legion club, several veterans
speakers, and a plaque given in dedication to a fallen soldier, we were there to capture it
all.It also acted as good exposure to be in front of all those students; I had a few come
offer to help me with the video equipment after the event.
Cokato –Graphics
In addition to updating Cokato’s graphics, I also spent some time redrawing their city
logo. When I had requested the logo from Teresa (Deputy Clerk), she couldn’t find anything
with a resolution higher than 200 x 200.Thismeans the
logo looked small on the new graphics, and scaling it up
made it look extremely blurry.By redrawing it in
Illustrator, we now have a nice clean graphic that can once
again be scaled. I will be passing the file off to Teresa,so
they have it for any future needs.
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