‘Our Town’ program coming to town at end of the month
What does Bethlehem mean to you?
Odds are if you ask 10 different people that question, you’ll get just as many answers. But that’s just what public television station WMHT wants from town residents as it brings its Your Town series to Bethlehem and invites citizens to become videographers.
The station last did a `Your Town` series 10 years ago, covering Glens Falls, Pittsfield, Poughkeepsie and Saratoga Springs. The initial goal is to also do four installments this year to resurrect the program, said WMHT Senior Vice President Scott Sauer, but he thinks that could just be the beginning. The station in wrapping up production on its first installment focusing on the City of Amsterdam.
`The response has been so positive so far that I’m optimistic that we’ll just keep going from there,` he said.
The call for participants in Amsterdam yielded over 30 stories on a wide range of topics, said Producer Joanne Durfee, from students showing off their favorite park, to athletes telling all about area teams to profiles of the city’s various neighborhoods.
`Because it’s a community-based project, we’ve really involved the community,` Durfee said. `It allows the people in the communities to tell the stories from their point of view, as opposed to WMHT filming a documentary about Bethlehem from our point of view.`
The producers will be looking for a similarly diverse group for the show on Bethlehem. The requirements are pretty simple. You must have an idea, filming equipment and time at your disposal. Enthusiasm for the town you live in doesn’t hurt, either.
`Really what we want people to do is tell why its special to live in Bethlehem,` Sauer said. `We want the residents to define that themselves.`
The first `Our Town` series was filmed and aired in the days before the phrase `user generated content` was a staple in our daily media diet. Today, millions of people share their lives, thoughts and hilarious pet antics through Internet services like YouTube.
But whereas the Internet can be a vast wash of fragmented ideas, `Our Town` seeks to cull and hone what will be most informative and interesting for viewers, said Sauer. That ability to focus a message is where the value lies over new media.
`Our job is to serve as the curator,` he said. `As popular as YouTube is, as popular as the Internet is, there are still so many more people who will watch television than who will visit YouTube.`
The station will be holding a meeting on Monday, Nov. 29, 7 p.m., at the Farm Family Corporate Office, 344 Route 9W in Glenmont. There, producers will go over story ideas and offer some pointers. From there, taping will take place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. On Dec. 13 and 14 the filmers will be interviewed by WMHT to provide a narrative for their stories, which will be edited and placed together into the 90-minute program.
`Our Town` Bethlehem is scheduled to air March 3, with a public screening a few days beforehand. Like the Amsterdam installment, there will also be a DVD release with expanded footage and an interactive Internet component, where viewers can use a map overlay to mark and share their own favorite town spots.
Sauer, a resident of Delmar, said he’s excited to see what his neighbors come up with for Bethlehem. He thinks there’s a wide variety of choices that make the town a good spot for the project.
`There’s wonderful neighborhoods, there’s wonderful architecture, there’s characters in the town whose stories could be captured,` he said. `It’s really, I think, going to be hard to narrow down what you’re going to do, because there’s so many things you could focus on.`
`Our Town` Amsterdam will air Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7:30 p.m. on WMHT.“
