Cal State LA Students in the Television Media Studies Department (TVFM) and Diablos Media were a part of a Live Global Taping event that brought together media students from across the world in a 24-hour-long livestream event. The livestream began in Australia and closed in Pasadena, and focused on the future of media, technology and AI.
Cal State LA students livestreamed from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Media Summit at the Pasadena Convention Center. The Live Global Taping event was sponsored and held in partnership with the Media Talent Manifesto and Blackmagic Design, who organized and hosted the livestream.
Jordan Rivera, a journalism major, opened the live show and served as the first host for the stream. He interviewed Tejaswi Mulagada, technical program manager from the Alphacord Media Group. The company offers services such as audio-visual integration, cabling, decommissioning, and broadcast media solutions.
“It’s kind of weird, once everything is going, the nerves kind of go away,” Rivera said. “I think you have the nerves the night before, the hour before, the 10 minutes before, and then you realize, ‘oh, I’m just talking.’”
Cal State LA’s Television Production class produced the livestream, and the equipment was provided to them by Blackmagic Design. The on-air cast and talent was provided by Diablos Media, a social media and TV broadcasting club at Cal State LA.
This opportunity gave students the experience of live broadcasting and worldwide exposure.
Carrie Whitten, co-founder and managing director of Media Talent Manifesto, said the channel came about as a result of a conversation between Vizrt and herself.
“We’ve got an amazing array of companies working on this project from Vizrt who are absolutely critical alongside AWS, ITV Studios, Deluxe, SMPTE, IBC,” Whitten said in a Youtube video about the event. “We’ve just got the whole array of industry working on this really exciting, dynamic, and one-of-a-kind project.”
Media Talent Manifesto’s mission is to unite the industry with students. “I hope that it really forges a relationship that is really close now between industry and the universities and the students,” Whitten said.
The channel offers universities across the globe opportunities to live stream events. Cal State LA’s hour as a part of the 24-hour broadcast can be viewed on the Media Talent Manifesto YouTube Channel.
Diablos Media members made up a majority of on the on air talent for the stream. The group was present the entire week and used the first days of the event as rehearsal.
Julian Reyes, an Emmy award winner and professor in the TVFM department at Cal State LA, and Marla Ulloa, who is also a professor in the TVFM department, oversaw the students’ collaboration.
“I had no fears,” Reyes said. “I was a reporter for many years, for over 24 years, and so I’m really good at spotting my students who are good, that I know that would be good as an on-air talent.”
The only host that was a part of the livestream not to be from Diablos Media was Nathaniel Ross, a television/film major student from Cal State LA.
“I do take this very seriously, and this is something that I do see myself doing in the future,” Ross said.
When asked about Diablos Media, Ross commended them for their professionalism and work during the hour-long global taping event.
“They’re very professional and very punctual and they do not mess around,” Ross said.
After graduation, Ross intends to work independently within the TV and film industry.
In preparation for the livestream and conference, journalism major and Sports Editor for the University Times Steven Lopez, has spent this past week filming behind the scenes footage for the Diablos Media Instagram.
“This past week consisted of rehearsals for on-air talent,” Lopez said. “They also had to film interviews for the prerecorded packages played during our hour of the show.”
Journalist Juan Gomez Esparza’s past week consisted of research of the topics and multiple rehearsals throughout the week leading up to the live broadcast.
“We did a lot of rehearsing putting scripts together,” said Diablos Media President and Multimedia Reporter at the University Times, Destiny Durant.
Cal State LA’s live stream was part of the broader multi-day conference at the Convention Center, where students from Diablos Media and the TVFM department had spent time producing and rehearsing for the live event.
Some of the coverage in the Cal State LA live broadcast was based on the conference and involved attendees, panelists and guests in their pre-recorded segments.
SMPTE is a professional association of engineers, technologists and executives working in the media industry. The nonprofit’s mission statement is “To inspire technological advancement in art, science, and media everywhere for everyone.”
The conference took place from Oct. 13-16 and is an annual event. The conference discussed many topics from applied AI, automation in live production, advances in file size reduction, streaming, and panels with titles like “What’s Real” and “Interoperability in AI: Is There Such a Thing?”
The topic of AI took the stage with more than 10 panels discussing its usage and application in the field of broadcast journalism.
The conference’s guest speakers were experienced experts in their respective fields. Speakers included Andy Maltz, Buzz Hays, and Jeremy Middle. Maltz is a founding member of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Advisory Committee on the Electronic Records Archive. Hays is a producer of the 2006 movie “Open Season,” and Middle is a senior manager at FanDuel.
Guest speakers from other various companies were in attendance as well. Google, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Riedal, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast and Sinclair had representatives throughout the conference panels.
