#MediaMonday: Cool Stuff

Good Morning Everyone,

We have so many cool things happening right now at STN.

Tuesday at 3:00pm PST we are having a CTE teacher information session and then at 5:00pm PST I get to host an Inside the Industry with one of my former broadcast students, Aviva Okeson-Haberman, who is now a reporter for NPR. Please encourage your students to join the Zoom; Aviva is amazing. ASU Night is on April 20th and Teacher Talk is April 22nd; lots of awesome stuff. 

Also, at the beginning of May, we have a brand new contest launching to finish out the year. This is going to be good; stay tuned.

Today, instead of a lesson idea, I am going to offer a gear suggestion. I don't know about any of you, but this year is the year of the livestream. Everyone wants a live video and today's suggestion is for an awesome little piece of gear: 

The Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Switcher. 

We use this thing when we least expect it. Like most of you, I have had a ton of people this year come to me with the opening line "we have this thing that we need you to film for our livestream". 

The ATEM Mini is just the trick for this kind of request. Here's what they can do in a nutshell. 

You can connect up to 4 cameras to the switcher (these can be any camera with an HDMI out)

You can plug directly into an ethernet cable to stream to YouTube, Periscope, etc. 

Plug in your audio sources

Hit record/Stream.

You are live switching!

They are the coolest little things. In a practical instance, my program was just asked to film an opera for a local university. We took three cameras, an audio recorder, and this switcher and recorded a live multi-switch that looks amazingly professional. Also, the switcher that we bought is a model called  ATEM Mini Pro ISO, which records each camera track on a separate file, records the live switch on its own file, and records the entire production as a DaVinci Resolve project file that saves onto an external hard drive. What this means for post production is fairly simple: the rough edit is basically finished before you pack up your gear. 

I love this little thing. They start at $295 and are a lifesaver at the oddest times. If your programs are ever asked to do extra projects for people and want to save time and teach a cool skill to your students, pick one of these up. 

I'm calling it right now and saying that this is the "must have" gear for the pandemic age; try one out.

Talk to you soon,

Josh Cantrell