Tag Archives: judith vecchione

Don’t Miss the Deadline for the 2013 CPB/PBS Producers Academy

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The deadline for the 2013 CPB/PBS Producers Academy at WGBH is Friday, December 14, 2012. To apply for this intensive training program in public broadcasting, please visit the official website.

For the past 11 years, CPB and PBS have offered a Producers Academy that provides intensive training in public broadcasting production. Many talented individuals have emerged from this workshop, finding success on various public broadcasting platforms.

25 individuals will be offered the opportunity to go to this year’s workshop at WGBH-Boston from Saturday March 30 through April 5, 2013. The goal of the Producers Academy is to encourage a diverse and talented group of producers to create new and greater programming achievements in public broadcasting. The firm deadline for interested applicants is Friday, December 14, 2012.

This weeklong seminar is free and open to media makers nationwide who want to develop skills and connections in public broadcasting. Over the seven-day period, participants can expect to attend intensive courses that cover a wide range of production skills, building on the expertise that has made PBS a well-known and respected American cultural outlet. Continue reading →

Independent Producers Get Hooked Up Digitally

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Producers and filmmakers convened in Boston last month for the annual CPB/PBS Producers Workshop. The program, started 10 years ago by veteran WGBH producer Judith Vecchione, has trained more than 190 producers from some 40 states, and ITVS has participated in every class since the beginning. ITVS’ Senior Programming Manager, Richard Saiz, spent an entire day giving feedback to producers at the workshop. Matthew Meschery, Director of Digital Initiatives at ITVS, was also on hand. He co-facilitated a workshop on new-media and filed this report.

From the Producers Workshop in Boston

This was the first time I had attended the Producers Workshop in any capacity and it was also the first year they designated an entire class on the broad subject of new media. I was thankful for being invited and thankful that the Workshop’s Director, Judith Vecchione, WGBH, and CPB recognized new media as an integral part of a producer’s training in working with public television. Oh yes, and I was thankful for the air conditioning in the WGBH building (I had forgotten just how humid New England can be in the summer).

The session was co-facilitated by myself, Dave Peth, interactive producer at WGBH and Dan Sonnet, interactive producer for PBS. We decided to structure the first part of the session as an overview, covering a wide range of topics from trends in trans-media storytelling, to social media (a formal debate of the pros and cons of Facebook and Twitter), to digital distribution, to games (you’d be surprised how much documentary producers know about digital games). We then spent the latter half of our three-hour session discussing some new media projects that the producers were working on. Projects ranged from a role-playing game to an episodic web series, to a user-generated content campaign. It was exciting to have producers share their ideas with us and their peers so openly and accept honest and constructive feedback considering this is a relatively new discipline for all of us.

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