Job Description: HCTV Part-Time Field Producer

About HCTV

HCTV is Comcast Channel 1080, the P.E.G. (Public, Education, Government) Community Access Station for Hardwick and Woodbury, and Greensboro Bend, Vermont. We cover municipal meetings, high school sports games and arts performances, and many other community events. We offer public video training and equipment resources to anyone in our service area looking to create their own content. Our station is located in Hardwick’s municipal building at 20 Church Street. This is where our cable channel broadcasts from as well as where we store our equipment and edit our programming. 

HCTV has a new director as of 2022 and we are looking to grow. We hope to become a source of inspiration for our community, increasing positive dialogue and strengthening our community’s identity and pride. Your talents and creativity could become an essential part of our new direction. The sky is the limit! 

Summary

HCTV seeks a new part-time team member to round out our crew. The main role of a field producer is to help record public events and finish them with some basic editing. This person often works solo but frequently works on a team of two or three for live events. The right person doesn’t need to have the exact related experience, only the capacity to be trained on our video equipment and software. If you have no experience with film production or broadcasting, there will be a lot to learn but you still might be a great candidate. This job is ideal for someone who wants to supplement their other work and doesn’t mind a schedule that changes frequently and ebbs and flows. This is a very part-time job at about 5 hours a week on average (our best estimate). 

Duties

• Operate cameras and audio equipment to record public events, indoors and outdoors
  • Examples include Hazen sporting events, arts performances, presentations and talks, local municipal meetings
• Use streaming software to live stream public events
• Edit recordings to final form using Adobe Premiere
• Pick up gear at station and return all items using a checklist
• Be responsible for a set of station keys
• Have a reliable vehicle to get from station to event location
• Be able to lift at least 20 lbs
• Occasionally be available for short notice changes to the schedule. For example when sporting events get rescheduled due to weather. 
• Troubleshoot on the occasion that there is an equipment malfunction
• Plan ahead by bringing snacks or what’s needed to be comfortable in case later hours are unexpectedly required, such as if a meeting goes long or a game goes into overtime 
• Be a public face for the station, showing kindness and respect for all people
• Depending on interest, potential for the position to grow to include:
  • Creative production projects to increase engagement with our channel
  • Graphic design and web design projects
  • Teaching workshops
  • Administrative assistance 
  • Professional development opportunities

Compensation and Perks

• $16-$20 per hour depending on experience
• Hours: Shoots are generally 3-5 hours from gear pick up to edit export, occasionally longer but that is rare. During busy times shoots can be several times a week. During slow times shoots may be as few as one every other week. Our busiest times are during sporting seasons with peaks in December–February, May and September-October. Estimated average: 5 hours per week. 
• Mileage is compensated for on shoots that require traveling to towns outside of Hardwick
• Access to HCTV’s inventory of video & audio recording gear and an iMac with Adobe Suite when the office or gear isn’t otherwise in use
• Flexible hours
• Casual work environment, compassionate coworkers/supervisor 
• Filming public meetings and events keeps you in touch with what is going on in your community and gives you a sense of having a meaningful role in it (speaking from experience). 

The right person will:

• Be a values based, community-minded person
• Have the ability to learn new skills if needed
• Be comfortable with computers and new technology
• Have some experience with video production or a transferable skill combined with a desire to learn the field 
• Have an artistic sensibility – ability to make things look nice
• Be alert and detail oriented or highly sensitive, having an high level of awareness for what is happening in the room, on camera, and often the stream as well
• Be organized enough to keep track of one’s own schedule and show up to shoots on time
• Enjoy being part of a team
• Have education about diversity and inclusiveness with an openness to always learn more and take feedback when necessary

HCTV is an equal opportunity employer and considers all applications without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, marital or veteran status, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.

How to Apply

Please respond to this questionnaire to the best of your ability. 

Responses are accepted in audio or video form, should you prefer a different mode of communication. 

Resumes or cover letters are optional and can be emailed to info@hctv.us. 

We will contact qualified candidates for interviews. 

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis but we would like to begin training ASAP. 

HCTV’s Example Productions

Check out our sports coverage and new “Hazen Hi-lites” reels here: 

Hazen Sports

We often film local talks such as these: 

Greensboro Community Library

We would like to do more local documentary projects like this: 

Hardwick Village Market

Collaboration with local theater groups:

Charlie & Margaret – The Real Vermont Etiquette

Modern Times Theater 2021

We sometimes do concert recordings such as these: 

Roy MacNeil and Friends 2018

Craftsbury Vibrations 2021

Pete’s Posse 2021

Honeybee Steel Band LIVE

We hope to restore kids camps in the future: 

Vid Kids

Workshop description

We hope to partner more with the Hazen Drama Club and Music Department in the future: 

Hazen Drama Club

Hazen Winter Concert

Special Event Coverage

Woodbury Teacher Appreciation Day

Spring Festival Parade 2022

Much more and much more potential! 

In 2021, HCTV awarded grants to four local applicants who had a great idea for a creative short film. The results were poignant, original, and are specifically about or resonant with our community.

A note from HCTV Director Elizabeth Rossano:

The goal of the station is to foster community through media sharing and there are very many ways to do that, and this grant process was an effort to diversify those methods. What makes me excited about community media is that it fosters a sense of identity and strengthens our bond just by belonging to this place. I hope that with a clearer shared identity for our community, we will all grow a stronger sense of belonging to each other, resulting in raising all boats. It’s so rare that short films get funded on a local level, so I think what we have here is something really special.

If you would like to donate to the next round of these films being created, please use this button here and select “Community Creators Fund” from the dropdown menu. Thank you so much for being part of this!

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=D3ZUFJB99YAW2

COOKING UP COMMUNITY: CONNECTION, DISCOVERY AND JOY by Elizabeth Rossano

Through collaborative, youth-centered programming, Reeve Basom of the Center for an Agricultural Economy and community partners are nurturing curiosity, connection and a love of place in the young people of the Hardwick area. From gardening with elementary school students to preparing food for community meals, the Place-Based Education program supports participatory, community-centered learning experiences that unlock opportunities for meaningful connections to place, each other and to a sense of possibility.

CAE is a community-based non-profit with deep roots in the Northeast Kingdom, founded in 2004 to build regenerative, just, and healthy local food systems that create socially thriving and economically vital rural communities. We do this through a range of programs which provide the infrastructure, education, and connectivity to forward our goals. Our approach is rooted in understanding specific community needs, and collaborating with local, regional, and statewide partners across sectors for long-term transformation and resilience. For more information visit  www.hardwickagriculture.org 

Elizabeth is a video content creator and documentarian based in East Hardwick. She loves telling stories of people who are passionate about their work – particularly people who work the land, lovingly feed others, or skillfully produce their crafts. Her work has been included in art installations, featured in national media outlets, and viewed all over the world on social media.

TELL ME HOW IT WAS by Meredith Holch

“Tell Me How it Was” offers a glimpse of East Hardwick in glory-days of old. Handmade stop-motion animated sequences created from old black and white photos bring to life the robust history of East Hardwick. Interviews with local folk who grew up in the town in the thirties, forties and fifties provide the voice-over. Information from local historian Paul Woods and the Hardwick Historic Society set the scene of bygone days when village life centered around the mills lining the river just south of the long-gone covered bridge. 

Local filmmaker Meredith Holch specializes in short animated films. Her work has been shown at venues ranging from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to the walls of endangered community gardens in NYC and the sides of old barns in northern Vermont.  

UNDER THE RAIL TRAIL by Roy MacNeil

Under The Railtrail is a journey of introspection and wonder, as it explores the monumental stone culverts left behind from Vermont’s bygone era of the railroad. It captures the remarkable experience of walking through a lush forest, ancient and timeless, to stumble upon a towering stone structure. Ponder its existence, and peer into the past to examine how such a thing could come to be and what it means today. 

Roy MacNeil is a music producer, violinist and award winning composer; now turned filmmaker from Greensboro, VT. He draws inspiration from exploring the natural world and diving into the unknown. 

LET’S TALK MUSIC by Rip Keller

At the age of 12 Rip Keller, formerly of Seattle, became an immigrant boy in Mexico. As he confides in this video, the experience gave him a new understanding of what music means, and “how it means it,” setting him on the curious path that has kept him and his international audiences entertained in the decades since.

Rip Keller grew up in Seattle, Mexico, and France. After graduating from Harvard, he worked as a choral conductor in Los Angeles and Mexico, and then moved to New York to pursue solo performing. He created the Emmy-nominated series “Viaje al Centro de la Música” (Journey to the Center of the Music) for Chilean television. South Walden has been home since 1986, and home to his Chilean wife and their bilingual daughter since 2008.