Summary of Intent
The outreach video markets the BTV program within a fictional drama. The main character is a student in the program; this character isn't very technical, but knows that s/he will complete the program and obtain interesting well-paying work in media engineering if s/he applies him/herself in completing the program. The second character is a friend of the student, is pretty technical, but does not know what sort of career path to take and has not heard about media engineering. The student plans to surprise the friend because the student knows that the friend would be very interested in the program once the friend finds out about it. The student plans the surprises in stages, culminating in the student's acting as technical director of a video being produced. Both the student and Steve Goze, the coordinator of the program, inform the friend about the program and the employment prospects for graduates. Cutaways and casual interviews with other students in the program provide additional information about why people enter the program and what sort of work is done in the program.
Versions
There are two versions of the video. One, the English version, is where all dialog is in English. The other, the Spanish version, is where all dialog between the Student and Friend characters is in Spanish, and all other dialog is in English.
Distribution
Available on cable and for download.
Cable
Comcast Marin channel 26 will be showing the English version on:
- Monday, October 15, 2007 at 5:00 PM
- Friday, November 2, 2007 at 8:00 PM
- Monday, December 10, 2007 at 5:00 PM
- Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 6:30 PM
- Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 6:30 PM
- Monday, February 25, 2008 at 7:00 PM
- Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 6:00 PM
- Monday, May 19, 2008 at 8:30 PM
- Monday, July 7, 2008 at 5:00 PM
- Friday, July 25, 2008 at 9:00 PM
- Thursday, October 9, 2008 at 6:00 PM
- Friday, October 24, 2008 at 5:00 PM
- Friday, February 6, 2009 at 4:00 PM
- Monday, February 16, 2009 at 6:30 PM
- Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 7:00 PM
- Monday, May 18, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Comcast Marin channel 26 will be showing the Spanish version on:
- Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 5:00 PM
- Friday, November 2, 2007 at 8:30 PM
- Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 5:30 PM
- Friday, December 28, 2007 at 6:00 PM
- Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 6:30 PM
- Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 7:00 PM
- Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM
- Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 9:00 PM
- Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 6:00 PM
- Monday, July 21, 2008 at 8:30 PM
- Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 5:00 PM
- Monday, October 13, 2008 at 5:00 PM
- Friday, January 30, 2009 at 4:00 PM
- Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 6:30 PM
- Monday, April 20, 2009 at 10:00 PM
- Monday, May 11, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Download
Here
I transcoded the DVD video into AVI and MPEG-4. I did this on a Mac. I tried playing these files on a Windows box using Windows Media Player, but there is sound and no video. That's probably because the codec I used to create the files isn't supported on Windows Media Player. The MPEG-4 files play OK (both sound and video) on a Mac, and both formats play OK on my FreeBSD box. If you want to see the videos on a Windows box, download the VideoLAN VLC Media Player.
They are big files, so they will take a while to download. I may have to remove them from my web site if there are too many downloads; that is not likely except for all those site-scraper bots.
- English version (MP4) - 11 minutes - 118 MB
- English version (AVI) - 11 minutes - 122 MB
- Spanish version (MP4) - 17 minutes - 189 MB
- Spanish version (AVI) - 17 minutes - 195 MB
Internet Archive
The MP4 files are also available from the Internet Archive - search for "Broadcast Television Engineering" in Open Source Movies or go directly to the English version or Spanish version. The Internet Archive allows you to see sample images from the videos, stream or download the videos, and watch a Flash version of the videos.
BitTorrent Protocol
The MP4 files are also available using the BitTorrent protocol from the following trackers.
Mininova hosts the English version and the Spanish version.
YouTube
The videos are on YouTube: English and Spanish
YouTube rejected the Spanish version because it exceeds their length limits.
Final Production Status
I burned the DVDs of the version I'm distributing on the day of finals (May 22, 2007). The Spanish version is complete except it is missing the scene of Steve Goze teaching a lecture. The English version is missing the following scenes:
- Steve Goze teaching the lecture
- Student and Friend in the control room at the bridge
- Student introduces Friend to Steve after the lecture and Steve answers questions about the program
- closing lines
- Friend pulling up in the parking lot and the first couple of lines of dialog in the parking lot
Production Challenges
I will tell this story eventually.
Additional Production Credits
I will add some additional production credits here.
Production Status
This status is as of 30 March 2007.
Spanish Version
The Spanish version is somewhat ahead of the English version. I have one more scene to shoot (that will be put into both versions) of Steve giving a short lecture while being videotaped, with the Student character acting as the technical director of the shoot (doing TD calls in a voice-over). Except for this scene, the Spanish video is complete.
English Version
The English version has a few additional scenes to shoot:
- A chroma key scene which gets Student and Friend from outside the studio to inside the studio
- The voice-over of Student doing TD calls during Steve's lecture
- The post-lecture scene where Friend asks Steve questions about employment prospects of graduates, and where Student tells Friend how long it takes to complete the course.
I also have to do titles and credits for the English version.
Script
Here's links to files in various formats containing the latest script (last updated 20 August 2006). They are all the same, so choose the one format you want. The date/time in the script is always correct (sometimes the date/time you see above will be wrong).
BTV Outreach Acting Script - HTML (exported from Open Office 2.0)
BTV Outreach Acting Script - Microsoft Word format
BTV Outreach Acting Script - Open Office 2.0 Open Document format
BTV Outreach Acting Script - PDF
Here is the production schedule (PDF), last updated 4 April 2006 around 12:01 AM. This is too old to be useful now.
Clothing for Actors
There are some rules for clothing based on technical limitations.
- Don't wear black or white for technical reasons. Bits of black or white here and there are OK. Larger expanses of black or white (e.g. entirely or mostly black or white shirts or pants) are not.
- Don't wear clothing with tiny patterns for technical reasons related to the resolution limitations we have with video.
- Don't wear clothing or accessories that contain obvious logos or other copyrighted images.
- People playing Student and Friend must not wear blue due to technical limitations relating to our blue screen background and the process called chroma keying
There are also rules for clothing based on continuity. Everyone must identify one complete set of clothes they will wear for the shooting. For Friend and Student, this may include a coat or other appropriate clothing for the outdoor shots. Everyone needs to wear or otherwise bring this set of clothes to each shooting day - not having these clothes with you means we may lose a shooting day.
BTV Marketing Video - Program Proposal and Fall 2005 Script
Here's links to files in various formats containing the program proposal (last updated 6 Sep 2005 at 9:54 PM). They are all the same, so choose the one format you want.
Program Proposal - Microsoft Word format
Here's links to files in various formats containing the script I wrote for Fall, 2005 (last updated 25 Sep 2005 at 10:00 PM). This is not the script we are using for the Spring 2006 production; I have this here for historical interest.
Script - Microsoft Word format
