From Vision To Awards

By Amy Reimann

During the height of the Covid pandemic, some people would just stay at home and get bored not knowing what to do to keep busy. But as a CTVP member, we continued to find ways to produce interesting and educational shows to entertain and inform viewers on different topics with wide appeal.  

In one of the CTVP meetings, it was suggested that we should consider producing shows on non-profit organizations. The thought of doing a show on the Sunnyvale Historical Museum with Laura Babcock, a neighbor and the founder/director of the museum, as my guest, came to mind. But a show about the museum alone could be quite uninteresting. Thus, linking the history of Sunnyvale to the museum would be ideal. I started doing my research and writing the script.

As the producer and host, I only needed two volunteers: a cameraman and an editor. I was fortunate to get two very experienced members of the group, Phil Lenihan and Jerry Oliver to be a part of my team. I also asked another new member Molly Chen as the camera assistant and her daughter, who has some knowledge in flying a drone, to record a few scenes in downtown Sunnyvale and the vicinity of the museum.

On the day of our taping in September 2020, with a 4-page script in hand, I met up with my crew and my guest, Laura, in front of the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum. We started setting up the scenes, checking out the lighting, testing our iPad and its built-in microphone and walking through a few details. Everything seemed to work fine and we began taping without a hitch. Little did we know that a few days later, the editor would find the whole audio unusable—there was a humming sound throughout the tape. We tried using the Audacity application to clean up the noise, to no avail. That meant we had to re-tape the whole show from beginning to end. The editor decided to try out his own camera to tape and see if the audio would be more acceptable. To our amazement, the sound from his camera was much better, and we could re-tape the whole show with his camera. Unfortunately, with the holidays in November and December, the museum was ready to put up Christmas decorations throughout the main floor. We had to put everything on hold until the middle of January 2021 when the decorations would be taken down. At this time, the Covid vaccines were ready for the masses. We had to wait until everyone had been vaccinated before resuming our taping.

We faced many challenges during taping and editing. Since we were using our own personal camera and new lavalier headsets for the first time, many unknowns were discovered. We had to go back to the museum many times to re-tape, more than I care to remember. Despite all the challenges during taping, the video turned out quite good, thanks to the skills and experience of my editor, Jerry Oliver. He was very patient and a very good listener. I shared with him how I visualized the flow of the show from beginning to end. We went over all the footage, scene after scene, day after day for months, stopping only when a scene was needed to be edited out, added in, slowed down, or sped up etc.. After six months of collaboration in the editing room, I decided to send the video to our group for review. The video was very well received and was approved for release on YouTube and cablecast on KMVT15 stations. Our group overwhelmingly recommended that the video be submitted to ACM (Alliance for Community Media) for consideration for the WAVE (Western Access Video Excellence) awards. I submitted the show to ACM. It was humbling as a new producer that my first video “Journey Back in Time from Valley of Heart’s Delight to the Heart of Silicon Valley” was selected as one of the two finalists for the WAVE awards in the Educational Access category. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9WTTeB48tc

A lesson learned is you should never give up your goal despite all the hurdles and bumps along the way. My goal in producing a show is to educate, inform and entertain our viewers in a topic that I am passionate about. I believe this goal has been achieved. It is very encouraging that this video has garnered over 2,000 views in the first year. The way a show is measured for its success is the number of views which is a good indication that the show has wide appeal. Have your eyes focused on the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and you will get there eventually with patience and hard work.