College Production U work screened at PBS 39

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

Local college students gave up sleeping, eating and occasionally showering to finish production of television segments they produced for PBS 39’s new College Production U program.

Their work premiered Thursday night at PBS 39 at SteelStacks in Bethlehem.

TV Station Manager Amy Burkett said six students from Moravian College and four from Lehigh University participated in the College Production U program, offered by PBS 39 for the first time this fall to give students hands-on production experience while earning college credit.

Burkett said the program has been a long time in the making.

“It’s been my dream for five years,” she said. “Our old facility didn’t have the space.”


View full sizeFOR THE EXPRESS-TIMES | SARAH PETERSStudents attend the premiere party Thursday for the College Production U class at PBS 39 in Bethlehem.
But the new $17 million PBS 39 facility at 839 Sesame St. allowed her dream to become a reality. Members of the PBS 39 production department and an adjunct professor, Peter Pellegrino, taught the course.

Burkett said she knows the students had to juggle their other classes and make sacrifices for College Production U, and she’s grateful they did. She said she’s proud to see what they accomplished.

“There’s that whole Mama Bear part of me that’s so proud of the students,” she said. “I’m also very excited to give them real world experience.”

The Moravian and Lehigh students worked in teams to write, shoot, edit and produce two television programs, Burkett said. The students and about 50 supporters -- made up of friends, family and professors -- filed into the state-of-the-art studio Thursday night for the unveiling of the products of countless hours of labor.

The programs, once polished, will be broadcast on PBS 39 sometime in January, Burkett said.

Moravian junior Rachael Hood participated in College Production U and said she was excited to see how the team’s program looks on the big screen.

“We all worked really hard on this,” she said. “To see something come out is amazing.”

The Moravian College students’ production, “Three Students, Three Expressions of Art at Moravian,” tells the story of three students passionate about the arts and is designed to show the importance of an arts education at a school like Moravian, Hood said.

Moravian student Alanah Cervantes is profiled in the production and came to the premiere party to see the footage for the first time.

“I’m always nervous when I’m being filmed, because nobody likes seeing themselves on camera,” she said. “We’ll see how it turns out.”

The Lehigh University team, made up of graduate-level students and Ph.D. candidates, tackled the issue of access to healthy food in their production, “Planting Seeds of Change in South Bethlehem,” which spotlights the South Side Initiative and the Gardening Club at Bethlehem’s Broughal Middle School.

Lehigh doctoral candidate Amanda Brown said the team learned everything from how to set up shoots and manage time for editing, to how to make things look good on camera.

“For the most part, a lot of it was learning on our feet in the field,” Brown said.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2011/12/college_production_u_work_scre.html