Now, from the studio of UGBC TV
When it was designed eight years ago, BC Cable
was intended as a vehicle for airing movies and videotaped lectures
and campus events, not for student productions. But a shoestring budget
and fairly basic equipment haven't kept students from launching original,
must-see programming for their peers. Two shows produced through the
undergraduate government-sponsored UGBC TV—one played for laughs,
the other a very local news program—have gained faithful audiences
this year.
Red Fabbri and Tom Ganjamie, both sophomores,
produce Basic Cable, a half-hour sketch comedy show that broadcasts
a new episode every month. Their goal is to get BC students to laugh
at themselves. All scenes are shot on location—in residence halls,
dining facilities, and outdoor settings around campus. In the premiere
episode, which aired on October 17, these things happened: A guy got
caught by his roommate dancing girlishly to an Eighties pop song. An
average Joe tried to dunk a basketball and missed really, really badly.
Four male students gathered around a table on which two cell phones
stood facing each other. "Three dollars on Big Blue!" said
one student, and then the cell phones were dialed. They were set to
vibrate instead of ring, and so they bounced across the table toward
each other. They collided; the black phone toppled. Big Blue won.
FABBRI AND Ganjamie's first foray into comedy together was in the fall
of 2002, when with three friends—fellow sophomores Patrick Kane,
Mark Goehausen, and Nick Boniakowski, all Basic Cable cast members—they
produced a movie called Tuna Lowers My Inhibitions for Boston
College's freshman film festival. Tuna placed first and soon
ended up on the Internet, where it became something of a cult hit. Impressed,
the crew of Boogie Heights, a variety show then being produced
by students and aired on BC Cable, invited Fabbri and Ganjamie to join
them; when the founders of Boogie Heights graduated in June,
Fabbri and Ganjamie decided to start a new show in its place, which
led to Basic Cable.
"We're all living in this little college
world," says Ganjamie. "We listened to what people were talking
about, and we played with that." In the weeks following the Basic
Cable premiere, many students approached the producers to say how
much they liked the show—and how much of themselves they saw in
it.
Twelve students—11 males and one female,
Leigh Van Ostrand '06—make up the show's cast and crew. Their
more or less weekly meetings, held in the UGBC conference room on the
second floor of the new lower campus administration building, are noisy
brainstorming sessions where ideas are hollered out, embellished, tempered,
and adopted by general approval. "I have an in with the guy who
plays the mascot at football games," someone pipes up at a recent
planning session, to a raucous response. "Say no more!" Ganjamie
yells, adding, after the laughter subsides somewhat, "You know,
there are limitations to what we can do with the mascot. We can't put
it into embarrassing situations, for one." A dozen heads nod, sober
again. The crew mulls the mascot problem for a while, and eventually
decides that the Eagle will get a cameo role in an upcoming skit about
a senior prom. The meeting ends with a round of Cell Phone Game 2.0,
played thusly: Turn on phones. On the count of three, bang phones against
foreheads. See what numbers came up. High score wins. The group plans
a tournament for the next episode of the show.
JUNIORS Jessie Rosen and Mike Hundgen are the hosts of a very different
student-produced program, Now You Know, which premiered in January
2003. It's a news show in the style of ESPN's SportsCenter, humorous
and informative in equal parts, aimed at apprising BC students of campus
trends and events. A 15-minute episode is shot every week.
Some two dozen students attend weekly Now You
Know meetings. These are exhaustive, detail-oriented affairs that
address everything from what stories to cover to how to speed up filming
sessions to who is available at what times to handle writing, editing,
or production duties. The meetings are chaired by Rosen, Hundgen, and
executive producer D.J. Doyle '06, who each devote about 10 hours a
week to the show.
On a Monday evening in October, the Now You
Know crew is gathered in the television production studio, housed
in the basement of Campion Hall. The room, about the size of a double-wide
trailer, is partitioned by two-way mirrors—on one side is the
studio proper, fitted out with a blue backdrop curtain and high-wattage
lighting, and on the other is the editing room, jammed with whirring
audio, video, and computer equipment.
Half a dozen students are setting up cameras and
props; another half-dozen monitor the electronics. Other students have
already filmed reports on location around the BC campuses; the night's
task is to film the lead-ins for the show that will air later in the
week. Doyle directs operations through a two-way radio headset.
"Cue talent," says Doyle, and Hundgen
and Rosen, seated behind a newsroom-style desk that the crew built from
scratch, begin to introduce the show. As usual, there is no script;
the aim is to keep the banter between Hundgen and Rosen spontaneous.
As they speak, Doyle monitors the cameras, ordering them to switch angles
and zoom in or out as needed. Mike Murphy '06 taps away at a computer,
dropping pre-made graphic elements onto the TV screen using a digital
video-editing program.
Several run-throughs are necessary to get everything
right, and with only an hour of studio time scheduled, tempers get a
little short. But the tension adds energy, as well. At one point, Hundgen
reminds viewers that basketball season tickets are on sale. "Have
you bought yours yet, Mike?" Rosen asks. Answer: No. "Why
not?" "Because you and I will both be abroad next semester,
Jessie. Far, far away from each other." Doyle chuckles. That's
a keeper.
Hundgen dreamed up Now You Know in the
fall of 2002, while taking a shower, he says: "We have all these
channels"—seven in all—"available on BC Cable,
so I thought, 'Why not use them?'" He raised the idea with Rosen,
who was already producing a Web site for BC students, a guide to events
in Boston, and they agreed to pursue it together.
Next September, after Rosen and Hundgen return
from Italy and Ireland, respectively, Now You Know will expand
to half-hour segments. The staff has also talked about producing news
briefs for viewing on the Jumbotrons during athletic events.
IN HIS seven years as assistant director of programming for BC Cable,
Darren Herlihy has lent help to numerous student productions—"it
is a lot of work to do [a show], and I give them a lot of credit"—and
watched all of them eventually go off the air. The commitment to producing
a show usually wanes, he says, when its creators move on—when
they graduate or simply find a new passion.
Fabbri and Ganjamie will likely go abroad next
year; Rosen and Hundgen will be abroad when this article is published.
But Now You Know is training two new hosts, and the Basic
Cable crew has recruited a couple of freshmen interns. The shows
may go on.
Tim Heffernan
Tim Heffernan is a freelance writer based in New York City.
Photos (from top):
On the Now You Know set (from left): Mike Hundgen '05, Jessie
Rosen '05, Chris Mitchell '07, D.J. Doyle '06, Bill Busacker '05, Matt
Jacobson '05, and Chris Bergendorff '06. By Lee Pellegrini
With dueling phones, Basic Cable sophomore cast members
(from left): Red Fabbri, Frank Maguire, Tom Ganjamie, and Hank Spring.
By Lee Pellegrini
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