Calvin Students Produce Cooking Show on Campus

April 30, 2008 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Calvin College students have spent the semester producing a cooking
show that is filmed live on campus and then uploaded, without postproduction
tweaking, to Vimeo, a YouTube-like video-sharing Web site.

Calvin College students are getting a real-world experience this semester in
media production and having some fun in the process.

Hey Mom! I Can't Cook is a television show produced by communications arts and
sciences (CAS) professor Brian Fuller's advanced media production class, CAS
351. And while it was Fuller and fellow CAS professor Daniel Garcia who chose
the cooking show concept, the pair is quick to credit their students for
bringing the project to life.

In fact students work at every level of the production: switcher, floor
manager, audio, teleprompter, director, camera operators, and even host (that
would be Calvin junior Andy Allen).

The students are enjoying wearing the various production hats and all the
training that goes with them. Junior Mike Rohlfing, who has so far served every
function on Hey Mom! I Can’t Cook except floor manager and director, said he
most enjoys wrangling the camera.

Fuller said the training is equipping the students to work in a TV studio
anywhere.

"They are prepared to shoot American Idol or the local TV news. Anything that
requires multi-camera production, they can do it. That's sitcoms. It's talk
shows. It's stand-up comedy. And, frankly, it's more and more churches."

Each week Calvin faculty, staff and friends visit the kitchen set to
demonstrate how to whip up everything from hummus to ice cream desserts. And
inserted into every show is the "package," a pre-filmed segment that takes the
viewer to the grocery store to shop for ingredients for the featured dish.

Fuller enjoys the camaraderie between students that has grown out of producing
the show.

"There is no competition. They are falling over each other to help out," he
said. "I am so proud of the New Testament fraternity in this class. It
translates not only into a good feeling. It translates into good television."

-end-
Received on Wed Apr 30 21:58:52 2008