Media Workshops and Training Program

Pamphlet to Blog Project Documentary mov | wmv | mpg

2006 was a time of evolution in the training program, with new classes, new teachers and new management. CCTV offered 130 classes to 502 participants in video and multi-media production. Our core production classes, Beginning Final Cut Pro, Primetime! (Beginning Studio) and Digital Editing Basics, were often overflowing with students. This demand is due in large part to great instructors we have here at CCTV. Here are just a few of the glowing reviews students made about the classes and instructors:

“You have something great going on here…I would like very much to be a part of its continued success!”

“Marissa is a great instructor. She is patient and communicates her ideas well. Her knowledge and experience is deep.”

“Thanks to Matt; he is a great instructor.”

Project Documentary & Zip Docs
Inspired to explore a production mentorship model for our classes, CCTV’s training program scheduled a 6-session, 3-month long production class called Project Documentary. “Citizen Journalism: Pamphlet to Blog” wrapped up August 10, 2006 with a screening in front of a packed studio audience.

Class participants Amy Mertl, Jason Ong, Darcie DeAngelo, Matt Landry, Mayana Leocadio and Buz Owen tackled the ambitious task of tracing the history of citizen journalism in the United States beginning with Thomas Paine in the 18th century to the editors of journalistic blogs today—all in 15, information packed minutes.

To follow up on the idea of project-based workshops, CCTV began to offer a new class, Zip Docs: 021XX, to profile each zip code of Cambridge. Zip Docs was featured in the Wall Street Journal on November 27. Diana Ransom wrote, "Cambridge Community Television… offers a seminar course that has students create documentaries about neighborhoods in the city. The videos will be geotagged and inserted into a Google map of the city. When people click on a small icon overlaid on a certain street, they might see a short profile of a local nonprofit or a community figure."

Visit the Cambridge Media Map at http://www.cctvcambridge.org/map/node.

More New Classes
The beauty of the CCTV training program is its nimble, ever-evolving nature. CCTV offered some new, challenging educational seminars including Promoting Your Show, Chinese Cinema, Gender & Media, and Digital Audio for Post Production. As media distribution continues to move from analog, one-to-many playback to digital, many-to-many, interactive, CCTV is training the community to keep up with these dramatic changes. Classes like Podcasting and Videoblogging show members how to use web-based media publishing and sharing tools.