Switchin' It Up

Photo courtesy of Samantha Jones, Associate Editor of the Lovely County Citizen

Oftentimes the lion’s share of the attention EAST receives is related to technologies like 3D printing, computer science, or software development. But EAST casts a wider net than that—and with new equipment being shipped to over a hundred schools thanks to the Directors Grant—EAST programs are expanding their focus on streaming original content.

Audio and video production provide great opportunities to fulfill needs in schools, and EAST students at Eureka Springs High School realized that this year. The school’s esports team had a need that could be addressed this way and provided a great opportunity to put this project into action.

“I thought it would be good to find a way to give representation to clubs and organizations who don’t have it like traditional sports do,” said Sydney Shaw, an 11th grade EAST student at Eureka Springs High School. “So we came up with the Twitch channel idea and then it kind of took off from there. Esports is the thing we’ve started with but we are slowly going to tack on other clubs as well that could represent all we have to offer.”

In order to do this, Shaw and her fellow students are using many of the tools that EAST provides such as microphones and the new Blackmagic ATEM Mini Live Pro video switcher.

“We have the switcher that we use to switch through cameras and we also use it for turning microphones on and off,” Shaw said. “We use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) for the bulk of it right now. It’s a software that can transition from different scenes, so that is our main controller and the switcher controls everything outside of the games.”

Junior Meredith Loudermilk says that the biggest challenge the students have faced is how adaptive they have to be with streaming different games on different devices, as they are forced to use different setups.

“We are still trying to work out balancing because we have different games we have to do,” Loudermilk said. “They’re from different devices so like we have League of Legends which is from PC, and then we have Super Smash Bros. which is through the Nintendo Switch which is a different setup that we have to have.”

The esports team is grateful for the students continuing through their struggles, as EAST facilitator and assistant esports coach Adam Louderback says they use the streams as a valuable resource to improve their play.

“They’re getting a lot of views after the games through the VODs (Video On Demand),” Louderback said. “We have the teams reviewing tape to find out what they did good and bad, and how they can improve for next week. The games don’t save the footage for the players, so they only have the footage from EAST’s live streams to go off of.”

250 miles away, Magnet Cove High School’s football team experienced an incredible season, and two EAST students, who are also brothers, teamed up to document all of it. Junior Dakota Reid and freshman Dalton Reid have led their class this semester in the creation of “The Coach’s Show,” where Dalton interviews Magnet Cove High School’s head football coach Caleb Carmikle every week.

“I was on the phone with [EAST facilitator] Coach Hartsell this summer, and he used to play and love football so we came up with the idea for this show,” Dakota said. “We were thinking about who should be our main host and I said, ‘Why can’t it just be Dalton?’”

Dakota and Dalton complement each other perfectly in the production of the show. Dakota has a deep passion for videography and video editing, while Dalton has a deep understanding of football and LOVES to talk about it.

“If you ask anyone at this school, they’ll tell you that I will talk to a brick wall at this point,” Dalton joked. “When Dakota presented the opportunity to me I immediately jumped on it. I used to play football so I know the technical terms, but it also helps to have people like Coach Hartsell to talk to if I need to ask questions.”

Dakota acts as the producer of the show, and has taught several EAST students at Magent Cove how to use video cameras like the Canon XA20 and how to edit in Final Cut Pro. Facilitator Shane Hartsell says he sees Dakota as a leader of his EAST program.

“I don’t even know how that happened,” Dakota said. “I guess I just turned into a leader by accident. I just came in and started working hard, climbed up through the ranks and never looked back.”

While the ten minute episodes on YouTube might look like they are easy to put together, the class puts in a lot of work in research and post-production every week to make the show as informative and engaging as possible.

“It takes a lot of time to brainstorm questions for the show and make sure that we and Coach Carmikle are on the same page,” Dalton said. “Plus in editing we have to find highlights to put on the show, and recently we’ve started doing post-game interviews out in the field which presents its own challenges.”

Hard work isn’t the only ingredient in creating a quality show however, as Magnet Cove’s football team began the season poorly which forced the crew to make something out of almost nothing.

“I think that’s the biggest challenge is figuring out how to make a good show when the game did not have the outcome that we wanted,” Dalton said. “One week we did a show after the team lost by 50 points the week before, and Coach Carmikle said he just wanted to say one sentence about the game and move on. So we had to do some critical thinking to come up with content for a decent show that week.”

It doesn’t matter if an EAST program is working with school sports or a community partner. Students are engaging in creating modern media content more than ever with technology made available through EAST.

If you’d like to contribute to making resources like these available in more schools across Arkansas, please consider making a donation at supportEAST.org.

Blackmagic ATEM Mini - About The Tech:

The Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro is an incredibly mobile video switcher that allows EAST programs to create high quality broadcast productions anywhere. Though it is a small device, the ATEM Mini Pro can support up to 8 video cameras and can be connected to computers and gaming consoles. With it, you can do things like:

• Create live/pre-recorded shows promoting your school or community partner

•Host live streams for esports programs and sporting events

•Broadcast a project proposal using cameras and a computer input

•Use cellular data to broadcast on the go • Record videos directly to USB Flash Disks