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One of the central concerns of every ATE project is getting the word out to the people who can benefit most. And ATETV is designed to do just that. Its current series is composed of 250 video segments, and each video can be a ready made recruitment tool. In fact, ATETV already has an audience of over 400,000 web viewers, more than 100 cable access stations in 42 states air their videos, and over 300 colleges and organizations have requested or downloaded ATETV’s custom clips on a panoply of ATE related content.

Inside an ATETV Video Shoot

ATETV boasts an impressive production schedule. According to ATETV creator and executive producer Anthony Manupelli, it all starts with their network of educational partners in the ATE community. They work with these field experts to identify interesting projects, faculty, and students that will be suitable for ATETV videos. Through a series of pre-interviews, the producers of ATETV suss out things like what’s being taught and how, who’s involved, and what the impacts of the project might be. If they find that the program is a match, they start working with an institutional contact person to determine everything from the schedule on shooting day to permission to record to a confirmation of insurance certificates.

On the day of the shoot, the ATETV crew arrives on site early in order to scope out the campus, classrooms, and labs. They set up lighting, plan camera angles, and choose interview locations. Typically, Manupelli says, they like to do interviews with faculty members during class activities, so that the viewer can experience the unique atmosphere of whatever ATE project is being showcased. Each interview, whether of faculty, students, or industry leaders, takes about an hour. The crew tends to spend 10 to 14 hours on site - a long day of lighting, interviewing, filming, and learning.

Back at ATETV headquarters, the editing process begins. According to Manupelli, an assistant editor works with the producers to digitize the recently shot footage. Together, the team creates footage logs, tags media, and starts picking out the key moments that will feature in the finished product. Production assistants or associate producers create paper edits from interview transcripts.The producers write scripts. They offer rough cuts to their educational partners, and screen them with at least two small editorial focus groups. Then, based on the feedback of various stakeholders and the focus groups, the filmmakers create a fine cut. Finally, the color-corrected, captioned, onlined, and mixed master is uploaded to the ATETV site, where members of the ATE community and the general public can learn about a new dynamic of the program, free of charge.

The New Bilingual Series

Unsurprisingly, ATETV continues to come up with innovative additions and approaches to its work. According to Manupelli, the group has been interested in addressing a Spanish speaking population for some time, but until recently its funding didn’t provide for the inclusion of bilingual video productions. However, thanks to a new grant from the National Science Foundation, ATETV has started producing a round of 36 bilingual student recruitment videos to target bilingual students and their families with each video highlighting a different emerging technology. Thirty of these videos will profile Hispanic students of all ages and backgrounds who are enrolled in advanced technology programs around the country. Another three videos will be aimed at families, providing a more general overview of STEM fields and what they can offer. Finally, three more videos will provide a peek at STEM fields more generally, with the goal of making these important opportunities attractive to Spanish speaking students and their families. The filming and production of these bilingual videos is currently underway, and the producers at ATETV hope to have all 36 videos available by the end of 2015.

The Future of ATETV

In our conversation, Manupelli noted that the demand for high quality recruitment videos in the ATE community is on the rise. It seems that more and more educators are asking for site and program specific video segments. In addition to increasing the number of video segments readily available on the ATETV website, the producers have also been developing and testing an ATETV customization tool with the South Carolina ATE Center of Excellence (SC ATE). The tool will allow users to create their own unique video segments using pre-existing ATETV footage. They will also be able to brand and add program-specific text onscreen. The solution, according to Manupelli, is exciting because it is cost-effective and it puts the power in the hands of ATETV’s partners in the field, which is exactly what ATETV is all about.