by Aaron Butts
For the past few years, the first two channels on Capital’s cable have been a stream of PowerPoint slides announcing events happening on campus with music playing in the background. That’s all about to change. These last few weeks of the semester will see the launch of the brand new CapTV, turning the mundane channel full of PowerPoints into a 24/7 student content-driven network.
The revamped channel will kick off following the CapTV 48 Hour Film Festival. The festival is giving teams of aspiring film makers the task of making a short film in only two days. The event is being run by two students, Carmella App, sophomore, and Kayla Meehan, junior.
“The only people working exclusively with the program are us two,” Meehan said.
App is in charge of the competition itself and described the rules.
“Each team gets a line of dialogue, a genre, and a prop that they have to use in the video,” App said. “The video has to be two to five minutes long and they have 48 hours to make it.”
She explained that the reason they provide prompts is to ensure that they are making the videos right then and not ahead of time.
“We came up with a ton of different kinds of dialogue which they pick up at the beginning of the 48 hours,” App said. “They have to use whatever the line is in their video. It’s to determine they didn’t make it before the 48 hours.”
According to Meehan, this idea isn’t something that only Capital is doing.
“It happens a lot at Ohio University, who has been doing them for a while and they are really popular,” Meehan said. “We want it to become a tradition here.”
The 48 hours of competition start on Nov. 22 and end with a viewing party that launches the CapTV network in the TV studio in the basement of the library.
“It ends Sunday, Nov. 24, at 6 p.m. Anybody can come, even if they didn’t make a video,” Meehan said. “We have tons of CapTV shows that nobody has ever seen before.”
“It’s all cap student productions going back a few years even,” App said. “There will also be music videos and shorts done from Capital students.”
They are also looking at doing some programming from outside video production, including sports highlight reels.
“We will be doing conservatory recitals too if they give us their permission,” App said.
According to Meehan, this whole project has been a long time coming, but with preparation, they are bringing CapTV back with a bang.
“It took us a while to get it together, but it’s going to be great,” Meehan said. “If [students] can’t come, they can watch it on channel 2 which is in every Capital-owned building. Our website will be launched the same day, based on Netflix and Hulu, but it’s free so they can watch our videos on there too.”
abutts@capital.edu
