Author: Kara McVey
A new addition to Oxy’s media outlet may soon propel the campus further into the world of digital communication. On April 9, Oxy Film Club President Rafael Cortina (first-year) and Vice President Daniel Watson (first-year) premiered their new project CatAList to an enthusiastic crowd in J200. The pilot combines elements of news and event coverage with short student pieces that focus on a number of different subjects, such as cars, restaurants and movie reviews. Since its premiere, CatAList has played in the Cooler, the Green Bean, the library foyer and online through Facebook. Comments on the Facebook page echo the largely positive campus response to this new resource.
Pioneering a new campus television network hasn’t been easy. Cortina and Watson have spent many months on the development of CatAList. They first devised the idea at the beginning of the year when they met through their CSP class and discovered a shared interest in film and filmmaking. They started talking about the possibility of introducing a new platform for campus news that would allow students to create their own short form video segments. After a semester focused mainly on establishing the Film Club, Cortina and Watson moved CatAList up from the back burner and began production on the pilot in January.
Cortina and Watson realized quickly just how much effort goes in to taking on an undertaking as big as launching a campus network. They had to find people to help them create original graphics and music for the program, contact students to produce individual segments, make plans for the segments to be filmed, edit all the footage captured and arrange campus viewing locations, all while operating under a zero dollar budget and borrowing film department equipment.
Once Cortina and Watson had a clear idea of all the different pieces that the project would require, they kicked their production into high gear. They began corresponding with various students about the possibility of collaborating on the pilot. They contacted The Occidental Agency (TOA) about making graphics for CatAList, and TOA contributed by designing most of the drawings and titles for the pilot. The co-creators also collaborated with Oxy’s own Robbie Lane (first-year), an aspiring composer, who came up with most of the program’s music, including segment intros and the network’s main theme.
While figuring out the nuts and bolts of network production with TOA and Lane, the duo started thinking about potential network segments. Cortina and Watson contacted a number of students who they knew were passionate about filmmaking, design and other potential series subjects, to gather content ideas. From the large pool of suggestions, the co-creators chose to include segments like “Word on the Street,” a compilation of student responses to the latest campus issues, and plan in the future to include “Freedom of Speitch,” a section in which President Veitch would have the opportunity to directly address the concerns of the student body. Cortina hopes that this segment would strengthen the channel of communication between Oxy students and administration.
This week, Cortina and Watson will meet with school administration, specifically with the Dean of Students Office, to discuss the future of Oxy’s latest foray into the world of new media. If the administration supports CatAList, Cortina and Watson expect to expand the project next year by setting up their own office.
They also plan for CatAList to be featured in various locations around campus, as well as on the Internet (through Facebook) and in a player on the MyOxy portal. They hope to bring in even more students – pairing those who want to have their own segments with those capable of adeptly filming and directing the segments, allowing for a wider base of collaborators. If they get enough support from the college, the co-creators would like the network to eventually become a bastion of Oxy’s thriving artistic community.
According to Watson and Cortina, next year’s CatAList might be somewhat different from the pilot, which was mainly intended as a model for the kind of program they hope to produce next year. With the aid of student feedback, the co-creators plan to tailor the network to better serve the interests of the school community. They ask that students watch the pilot and leave comments and suggestions on the Facebook page, so that they can have a better idea of what students are looking for from CatAList. Additionally, if they receive enough support for the project, they plan to instate an online polling system for students to decide which segments they should continue to produce and which should be cut from programming.
The CatAList creators want the network to develop into a project that Oxy students collaborate with and watch on a weekly basis. Though CatAList has been out for only a couple of weeks, Cortina and Watson say that they have already received a number of responses from students interested in becoming involved in the project by starting their own segments. With the support of students and administration alike, CatAList may soon become the network to which its creators aspire. In the meantime, Cortina and Watson have earned their sense of accomplishment. CatAList may still be a work in progress, but it’s progress that the school should invest in.
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