Looking Back

A Recap of 2017-18 at BEC-TV...

Truck Upgrade!

Last July and August we ripped apart our truck...and rebuilt it in HD! As nearly all of our equipment was brand-spankin' new, this brought a lot of challenges on shoots. EVERY site was a new setup with the fiber. We all learned lots, and our HD productions looked mighty dang sweet!

Huge thanks to all the current and former techs - as well as parents - who helped with the rebuild!

A Whole Year Ago...2017 Kickoff!

In Mid-August we had our first ever BEC-TV Kickoff. It was a day packed full of fun, training, and food. 31 Techs and 40+ parents attended. This day was a great success, and - cuz' SO many of you asked for it - it's coming back again THIS fall!

Football

From there we went into Football, with leadership from staff and student producer Ben Cannavo. The crew LOVED the great weekly dinners from parents. (Thank you Parents!)

Football ended in a spectacular 4 days at US Bank Stadium. There we had over 30 techs, parents, and staff teaming together to wire the whole place up, make the production happen, and on the last day tear it all down and leave at around 2am.

At this tourney History was made! For a first in High School Football anywhere in the U.S. we teamed with the State High School League to provide Referee Review of plays. Making it all the sweeter was fact that we used the Zeplay instant replay system, developed right here at BEC-TV.

New and Cool Stuff Throughout the Year

Producer Tom Ringdal & Photographer/Editor Ryan Hall accepted a statewide award for The BPS Centennial Video BEC produced.

Our Techs got recognized by Bloomington United for Youth for all their great service to the community.

With our new Vmix and Livestream remote systems, we were able to produce up to THREE Live Multi-cam productions at once!
We did a complete rebuild of Olson Middle's production system using Livestream - Through typical clever resourcing (it's what we do!) we upgraded from a tired standard def system to state of the art HD with streaming... all for under 20 bucks!
When the scorebox graphics system we'd been using needed replacing we couldn't find what we needed on the market for a reasonable price. Student Tech Zach Vacura came to the rescue and coded a fantastic Scorebug program that we adopted for all our truck sports coverage. This is how we swing at BEC - Can't find it or afford something? Design it ourselves!
To communicate with techs, we rolled out a new Shoots RSVP system via Google Calendar & REMIND texts. Our response rate from techs went way up with less work on everyone's part. Win/Win! We also rolled out the BEC-TV Tech Portal and integrated our calendar and communication to students' BPS Hub.
This year we saw a record amount of parental support. Things like driving to shoots, helping with the rebuild, and providing tech dinners at shoots all helped support our kids in fulfilling our mission of serving the community by making great programming. Several parents who are in "The Biz" (some who were BEC-TV techs themselves as students) continue to help in significant ways.
BEC-TV presented nearly 400 new locally produced shows featuring Bloomington's schools and students this past school year!

Hockey

Staff Producer Paul Fourneia and Student Producer Alex Redding lead the BEC Team to provide plenty of coverage of "The Hottest Game on Ice".

MOA?

At the end of May we had the opportunity to stream the Minnesota Early Learning Day Celebration featuring the Teddy Bear Band at the Mall of America. We heard from viewers from around the state. Even the folks in the US Department of Education all the way in Washington DC tuned in to watch this!

Normandale Lake Bandshell

Due to construction at Kennedy's auditorium, this year's Kennedy Pops Concerts were all together in one night at the beautiful Normandale Lake Bandshell. Where ever the action is, BEC is there to cover it!

Graduation

Just a few days of Pomp and Circumstance

This year we had graduations at two locations. Although we had shot at these venues in the past, our new equipment made it quite an adventure.

Edina contracts us to cover there Graduation. Income from outside productions like this provides income to better serve our own students and community. (Remember, BEC runs entirely on grants, donations, and income we generate ourselves)

Baseball

We spent an entire Friday wiring up Target Field for Saturday's four State High School Championship games. It rained buckets on Saturday morning, delaying the start of the games by a few hours. This even pushed one of the games into Monday. The silver lining was that we had a several techs join us on Monday that had not been able to make it on Saturday (Yay!)

Evan Faas served as our Student Producer. This was the first time we've had one for these games.

Saturday's Crew

Monday's Crew

Banquet

Last month we held our first ever banquet. Gosh, did we feel fancy. We ate food, connected, and even gave out some awards!

It was great to have all of you there that could make it!

For those of you who missed it, here's a video of the Awards Ceremony

And here's the award winners themselves, trophies and all:

Jack, Alex, Tom, Ben, Zach

Evan

A picture is worth a Thousand...

Want to see (and nab for your own collection) more BEC family photos? Check out these.

And, hey, if you've got some shots of yourself and others doing that BEC Thing, share 'em, OK?

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