Here at TV Bedfordshire we like to mix things up a little and cover a variety of different things. That's why I'm beyond excited to announce that myself and Jade, another volunteer, have been given the go ahead to produce our own music show with TV Bedfordshire!
Being that we're both HUGE fans of music and love checking out local artists and attending local gigs, there really was no other explination other than to introduce us and let our ideas collide to create an amazing show all about the local music scene.
Bed Rocks (name subject to change!) will feature Bedfordshire's finest bands and artists. We'll be filming exclusive gigs, conducting indepth interviews and basically introducing your lovely ears to some really talented music.
Filming will be starting ASAP but in the meantime, we've gone ahead and set up our own Facebook page at TVBedrocks and our own Twitter @TVBedrocks to help spread the word a bit. We'll be using these accounts to keep you all up to date on how things are going, and we'll be including lots of behind the scenes news and photos. It's hard to stay promiment when things are being filmed and produced and not yet broadcast, so this way you can keep up to date with everything.
Be prepared to get jealous because the team at TV Bedfordshire bagged the amazing opportunity to cover AmpRocks this past weekend (and boy was it a scorcher!). If you haven't already heard of AmpRocks, it's the opening night of Ampthill's boutique annual Ampthill Festival, which is in it's fourth year running.
Lucky for us, we were able to get involved when AmpRocks had one of its best line ups yet with bands The Hoosiers, Toploader and local band Skies on Fire all performing. Better yet, The Hoosiers also held a free meet and greet/signing at a local restaurant within Ampthill city centre, which we also covered!
I'm sure you'll see all the footage soon enough but in the meantime here are some exclusive snaps from throughout the day.
Jade interviewing The Hoosiers as Rob films
Interviewing Skies on Fire
A sneak peak of some of the VIP section. Yes, it was on the top floor of the bus. With free champagne. And amazing views of the stage too.
The stage early on in the day when people were still setting up
Shane in VIP on the bus with the amazing background view!
Media passes!
A view of the crowd when I was allowed to sneak onto stage!
And finally, here's a little video (filmed on my phone so not the best quality!) from the VIP bus!
Keep your eyes peeled for the footage from the festival where we managed to get exclusive interviews with all of the bands and some excited festival attenders!
We've got lots of activity going on in TV Bedfordshire land recently! The second week of the Easter Holiday gave volunteer and teacher Toby Eager a real taste of what it would be like working on TV Bedfordshire full time. The guys registered as a Ltd company recently and will soon be having business meetings to gain advice on future trading opportunities when the company grows and when we are producing more programming.
We have been meeting lots of local people over the past few weeks and have a number of exciting projects in the pipeline. Firstly, we filmed at the Cardington Hangars for the first programme in a series of History programmes to be aired in the Autumn. We also filmed a pilot educational programme for GCSE aged students wanting to improve their maths with local Sixth Form maths whizz Jemma Allman (@Jemma_allman).
Filming at Cardington Hangers
Our recent meetings have included Shaun Jacues(@shaunjacques), a local comedian and soon-to-be sports presenter for TV Bedfordshire, and Tom Wild, Head of Media at Bedford College. Also the producer of the popular local programme The Rough Cut Sessions, Tom met with us and formed a local partnership with us, offering some great ideas for future programming.
We have also developed a partnership with the RSPCA North Beds branch based at Deepdale Veterinary Centre in Potton where we will be doing a monthly feature on domestic animals in need of rehoming.
Filming at the North Beds RSPCA brance at Deepdale Veterinary Centre
The biggest news, however, is that we have now moved premises. We have taken up residence on Bedford High Street and have a wonderful studio base to work from with significant space to film our regular news programme as well as a host of other programming coming to your screens soon. The first programme to be filmed at the new studio will be 'The Beds Book Review', a panel show of literary enthusiasts reviewing books encouraging local people to engage in reading. We are very excited to be based in Bedford but this will not affect our coverage of other areas in Bedfordshire and will continue to feature news and events from around the county. In our next post we will be featuring profiles of some of our volunteers, new and old, so you can get to know us a little better. We will also be featuring some behind the scenes pics of our move to Bedford High Street Studio.
My name is Louise Joy and from here on out I'll be helping to run the blog. I've been on board with the amazing team at TV Bedfordshire for about a month now but I'm so excited for all the upcoming projects we're planning and everything we're up to. I'll be blogging about everything that goes on behind the scenes - different events we attend, upcoming news and a little more information about what we're doing.
I'll also be doing an introductory post soon so you can learn about the team and the many contributors we have on board but for the meantime I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a 23 year old local blogger/writer/journalist, although I technically work part time in retail at the moment. In my spare time however, I'm constantly writing and blogging, networking on websites like Twitter, writing and just generally trying to be as media savvy as possible. Offering a helping hand to TVBedfordshire is a very exciting project for me as I love anything to do with the media. In college I studied Media Production, which covered everything from filming a music video to directing a documentary - it's going to be really fun using these skills again. I also love that I can be quite creative too - I've had many different ideas up my sleeves and I'm pleased to say the team have been on board for all of them. Soon I'll do another post about what these are and how you can get involved at a later date.
During my first official meeting of the team I got to visit the studio, where I was pleasantly surprised to find lots of really professional equipment including flashy cameras and lighting and even a green screen. We'll be moving to another studio soon though because the one we're at now is up a million different flights of stairs so a) that's a lot to climb up when you're carrying equipment and b) we're all too lazy to walk up them all on a regular basis anyway! When I met Toby, Margaret and Kofi I got to sit in and watch the weekly news bulletin being recorded, with Toby presenting. It's a longer process than you think, especially if you mess up or mispronounce something and have to start reading from the very beginning of the script again! Nonetheless, it's important to get things just right because we need to be professional. Luckily it helps to be patient.
We also discussed the fact that over Easter and onwards we'll be launching and recording a comedy show which will be really fun. We'll be getting local comedians in with a small audience as well as hopefully providing a few drinks and nibbles on the night. It's nice that we'll be holding some exciting events too and I'll keep you all updated about when we are filming this as we'll probably need some extra audience members!
Finally, last Thursday I went on my first official outing/filming session for TVBedfordshire with Margaret. We visited The Burnaby Arms, a pub in Bedford that hosts local music, to cover their PR session they were holding. The whole event was because the pub had won the PRS For Music Music Makeover award. The scheme behind the campaign is all about supporting local music and getting local artists playing in pubs again. The Burnaby Arms won a £5,000 cash prize to help spend on professional music equipment so that when artists perform in the pub it sounds as good and professional as possible.
The whole event will be summarised in the news bulletin later tonight (including my presenting/interviewing debut - scary!) but attending on the day was a lot of fun. The landlords had put on a lovely spread of nibbles and we were offered champagne (classy!) and the pub had such a great friendly atmosphere. Some very talented local artists put on a performance for us, and we were even treated to a brief visit from the mayor of Bedford!
Local artists Cicero Buck
I got to interview some really great people - including Guy Fletcher - and admittedly I was nervous to begin with! I thought it would be quite daunting but actually I found once I began interviewing, I started to enjoy myself! It was a lot of fun researching good questions and interviewing interesting people and it's something I'd like to continue doing. I was really pleased when I was even told that my questions were apparently really good!
Filmed on my phone so not the best quality!
All in all it was a great day and better yet we got our name out there and did a bit of networking too. Keep your eyes peeled for the news bulletin tonight showing the footage filmed on the day.
I'll be blogging again very soon about more behind the scenes business and other events and things we have coming up! As always, we are always after contributors so if you'd like to be on board or even if you have an event you'd like covered by us, please don't hesitate to email us on info@tvbedfordshire.com.
We travelled around bedfordshire on Tuesday filming members of the public's views on what we should be showing on TV Bedfordshire. Here is what they are saying.
