Arts and Culture

Wow, I just reviewed the first program in the new KOCT series, Arts and Culture and I’m so impressed. Not with just the production (more on that later!) but with the many non-profits and caring professionals who contributed to this first Arts and Culture project.

The first subject in this four-part series is about a unique collaboration between the Museum of Making Music and the Women’s Resource Center. “Hear Me & Heal Me” is introduced by Danielle Deery, with the Oceanside Museum of Art. This first program highlights a 12 week interactive, therapeutic music program for the residents of the WRC’s transitional housing. Rather than describe this wonderful 10-minute mini-documentary why not watch it by clicking here?

The Producer-Editor-Writer for this program was KOCT’s Peter Bonscher, a talented professional who continues to amaze me with his many skills. Peter is KOCT’s Program Scheduler/Senior Production Technician but he does much more than that. He’s a producer, editor, writer who comes to KOCT by way of the music world.  A life-long musician and composer, Peter is an award winning producer who brings a wealth of experience in management, finance and real estate, and is currently pursuing a degree in Communication.  Peter was the producer of KOCT’s news magazine program, Inside Oceanside. Peter has produced many documentaries including programs on the Oceanside Museum of Art and the Annual Candlelight walk by North County Amnesty International.  You’ll hear Peter’s voice on many KOCT programs and he was the perfect choice to launch this new series.

Art’s and Culture was funded by the Oceanside Charitable Foundation in 2013 and KOCT has matched their $6500 grant in order to produce the four programs in this series. KOCT will document all of the Arts and Culture programs that the OCF funded in their arts and culture 2013 focus upcoming programs will include Healing Through the Arts by North County Lifeline, Oceanside: A Celebration of our Rich Cultural Heritage by the Kid’s College and the 17^th Annual San Luis Rey Inter-Tribal Pow Wow by the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians Foundation.

We are pleased to be working with the Oceanside Museum of Art and KOCT continues to seek additional funding to continue this new series. If your business, corporation or foundation would like to help please contact me at KOCT for more information. 

Editing of Community Health Matters

As we mentioned in an earlier blog KOCT has completed the field recording of Community Health Matters, a new series about health issues and north county health resources. But that’s only half of the production work needed to bring this 16-part series to north county residents.

KOCT uses the Final Cut Editing system on Apple’s Macintosh computers.  Editing is the time-intensive part of production that few viewers are aware of but where the production value is added and polished. First the footage must be digitized or ingested and stored in virtual bins on Final Cut. When shooting this 30-minute program in the field there are many ‘takes’ to each segment sometimes there are technical problem or the guest needs to start over---these shots are eliminated and only the best takes are stored and then pieced together on a virtual time-line. After the story-line is constructed the editor will add PSA’s, graphics, titles and ‘b’ roll (footage to illustrate the interviews). So, for example, in the program on Robotic Assisted Surgery you’ll get to see these sophisticated new surgical tools in action while the surgeon is being interviewed. The final program is then sent to KOCT’s servers for airing, to our website for VOD and to the Oceanside duplicator, PMI, http://koct.org/ for DVD duplications.

KOCT is blessed to have many creative editors on this series and one of them is Angela Wong, Angela is very familiar with Community Health Matters as she was also the Camera and Teleprompter operator for the series.  She is originally from South Florida and attended Ithaca College (in upstate New York) where she studied Cinema Production. She graduated in 2012 and now works at KOCT and freelances on the side. Angela, despite not having studied Spanish in any particular level, enjoys editing the English and Spanish CHM series anyways. She told us this about the new health series: “With editing, I’m excited to see the show truly come together and finally stand on its own.”

Community Health Matters was funded by a Tri-City Healthcare District Community Grant and Tri-City Medical Center. It is collaboration with Vista Community Clinic, North County Health Services and KOCT. The series will start airing in late February and free DVD’s of the programs will be available at the hospital and clinics too. Stay tuned for more information.

State of the County

For the third year in a row our colleagues at the County Television Network (CTN) have contracted KOCT’s Mobile Studio to help them document the Board of Supervisor’s State of the County Address. This year it was given by Chairwoman Diane Jacobs at the County Operations Center in Kearny Mesa on Jan. 29th.

KOCT”s mobile studio was custom made for KOCT in nearby San Marcos and allows KOCT to provide ‘live to tape’ multiple-camera coverage of a variety of events from meetings, to parades to football games. We value our partnership with CTN which provides county government television and internet coverage on a variety of county government topics, check them out. http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/dmpr/ctn/programs.html

This weekend you can go to KOCT.ORG and click on Video on Demand to watch and learn about the state of our county.The event was streamed live and will air both on KOCT and on CTN with CTN providing the camera operator and director for this event.

Leading the KOCT team is KOCT’s Station Manager Jacob Rush who often directs KOCT‘s productions both in our studio and in the field.  Jake is a graduate of Cal State San Marcos, and has over a decade of video production experience. One of his current productions is the award-winning “Downtown Oceanside” a video production focusing on Oceanside as a vacation destination. Jake has also won numerous awards for the directing of sports programs.

Jacob Rush

Bill Peters

Working with Jake on the State of the County gig is KOCT’s Chief Engineer, Bill Peters. Bill attended the University of California at Los Angeles and received his degree in engineering in 1959. Bill has over thirty five years of experience in managing the design and construction of electronic information systems for Consolidated Systems Corporation, Scientific Data Systems and the Xerox Corporation. He has an amazing grasp and knowledge of the innumerable pieces of equipment required to run, operate and maintain an active community TV station like KOCT!

Community Health Matters - Watch and find out why!

Whew! After two long production days KOCT has concluded the first part of our upcoming new television series: Community Health Matters. 

This past week we shot 8 programs in both Spanish and English on Heart & Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes. KOCT’s Station Manager, Jake Rush directed these two heavy production days and he was assisted by a talented production team including Assistant Director Angela Miranda, and Addison Wolf who ran the audio board. (And we wouldn’t have rolled our mobile studio to record these programs if not for Chief Engineer Bill Peters who quickly diagnosed a battery problem!).

On the special television set for these shoots were Shawn Lennon, Maya Maravilla &Tamara Ilich on camera, also Angela Wong on Teleprompter. Tom Reeser was the floor director and Isabel Escalle from Tri-City Medical Center was our script advisor. Our host for the series is Univision’s Ricardo Berron.

Angela Wong on Teleprompter

Host Ricardo Berron with guests Jorge Gaspar Vista Community Clinic and Dr. Samuel Poniachik North County Health Services

In this coming month, right here on our Community Connection blog, we’ll show you the next part of the process:  The Art of editing this new series and the talented young people at KOCT who perform this time-consuming task.

Our goal is to start airing the first of 8 new programs in late February.  The programs will be shown in English and Spanish and, besides airing on KOCT, we will distribute them to our local library for check out and DVD’s will be available at North County Health Services, Vista Community Clinic, Tri-City Medical Center and at KOCT.

These programs were funded by a grant from The Community Healthcare Alliance Committee of the Tri-City Healthcare District and with funding from Tri-City Medical Center and from KOCT.  They are special tailored to emphasis the many health care resources right here in North County.

John Lynch, Irma Cota and Bill Horn On Journalist Roundtable this month

Video On Demand is so cool you can watch KOCT’s unique local programming when YOU want to, not just when it is scheduled on KOCT’s two television channels.  With our phone app, you can listen to our most recent Journalist Roundtable program while you drive to work.  And this month's show you won’t want to miss (Public Safety Reminder LISTEN don’t watch while driving duh).

Our special guest for the first half-hour of the show was the CEO of the San Diego U-T John Lynch and what an interview it was.  We had breaking news that included a short video about a new direction for the only daily Newspaper in San Diego County:  The San Diego U-T is about to launch News Now “sort of a new age CNN” a 24-hour Network that will launch here in San Diego but one that will provide a national news network featuring the latest in technology over the air and via the internet. Mr. Lynch also discussed newspaper employees and the cost cutting attitude that successful newspapers have to have to survive in this changing media landscape.

Our two other guests also provided topical and interesting information. For example Irma Cota, the CEO of North County Health Services explained that the new Affordable Care Act mirrored their goal to expand access to medical care. In fact NCHS has 12 employees at present whose job it is to educate the uninsured about the new affordable insurance options now available under the Affordable Care Act.

Our last guest was the Supervisor for the 5^th District of San Diego County, Bill Horn.  He said he thought they were on track (sorry for the pun) to put a new train station on Camp Pendleton possibly near the new Hospital that will serve the Sprinter, Coaster and AMTRAK.

So check out this month's show by clicking here. This program is a great opening for our new season and our upcoming shows.  As a reminder JRT airs the First Thursday of every month on channel 18 from 6 pm to 7 pm. KOCT also ‘streams’ the live show via our website.

Let's not forget our awesome staff

Maya our newest volunteer

North County Talks: Faith and the Common Good

This week we recorded the premier show of a new North County Talks series.   The program titled Faith and the Common Good is hosted by the Rev. T. S. Harris.  

Throwback Thursday

As we start the Year 2014, we would like to share with you some blast from the past:

Congressman Ron Packard was our guest on the Voice of Oceanside. The Voice used to be a one-hour call-in  program (viewers had longer attention spans in those days).  Tim Aldrich was the co-founder and the host of the Voice of Oceanside and this was one of the early sets.  Please write to current Congressman Darrell  Issa and encourage him to appear on KOCT’s  Voice of Oceanside in 2014!

And here are two pictures of the old council chambers from about 1987. Mayor Bagley and Council members Ben Ramsey, Sam Williamson, Lucy Chavez, Melba Bishop and Walt Gilbert were Oceanside’s elected officials—oh and of course Barbara Regal Wayne as City Clerk.

KOCT's cameramen are here recording the installation of the tile around the foundation for the KOCT documentary on the building of the Civic Center (1989)