April 12, 2010
The Village Green premiers tonight at 6 PM on FCTV-13 in Falmouth. It is a new monthly magazine-style television show produced by a team of volunteer FCTV producers, led by FCTV production assistant Alecia Orsini Lebeda. The opening show contains segments on a combined ArtsFalmouth meeting and artists reception at the Cape Cod Conservatory, No Guff Day at Falmouth High School, and a look into the effectiveness of the solar heating panels installed by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth. There will also be a puzzle: viewers will be asked to identify the subject and location of a photo taken somewhere in Falmouth.
The concept behind the title, “The Village Green,” is that the Town Green is a meeting place of people and ideas, and it is our hope that the show will serve the same purpose. I say “our” hope because I am one of the producers. With the assistance of my husband Glenn, and with a tremendous amount of support and help from Alecia, I produced the arts & entertainment segment.
It sounded easy enough, when I first heard about the show. All I had to do was put together a 5-7 minute segment, and other people would put together other segments, and, ta-dah! there would be a show.
Compared with the half-hour children’s show I produced for about 2 years, over 10 years ago, it sounded easy as pie. On The Village Green, I would only be responsible for 5-7 minutes, I would be part of a knowledgeable team, and nonlinear (digital) editing would make the whole editing process much easier than the tape-to-tape editing process I had used on the previous show .
Taping the interviews went well, but it was difficult to condense my 32 minutes down to 5-7. Digital editing wasn’t that easy either, even with Alecia doing most of the work, as she taught me the basics. I have a whole new respect for film editors. As with editing writing for length and logical format, you sometimes have to toss out content you really like because it is too long or just doesn’t fit in. Unlike editing writing, though, you can’t create new video in the editing studio as easily as you can manipulate words.
It has been an enjoyable learning process though, and I hope that Falmouth residents will watch the show tonight (it will be repeated at other times and dates; check the FCTV web site for schedule details). And, I hope that others will take advantage of the wonderful resource we have in FCTV. A $30 annual membership gives you free access to training and use of equipment so that you, too, can produce segments for The Village Green, or envision and create your own television show.
Notes on The Arts 