On Tuesday, the Alliance for Community Media, Northeast Region announced the finalists in their Fall Video Festival.  “Essentially Ellington” produced by Cooper Vacheron was selected for 1^st place in the Documentary Events category.  The eight minute program features interviews with several members of the Foxborough High School Jazz Ensemble speaking about their participation in the 15^th annual high school jazz band competition at Lincoln Center in New York last spring. Their insightful comments are interspersed with actual footage of the Foxborough students in performance with Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program. Coop is an eleventh grade trombonist with the Jazz Ensemble and conceived the program’s in-depth approach from the student musician’s point of view.  Over the course of two weeks, he shot the interviews and edited them with parent-provided performance footage at the Foxboro Cable Access studio using Final Cut Pro on the Mac computer. “This was his first time using this software, “ said Michael Webber, FCA’s Executive Director, “ and I was impressed with how quickly he mastered the techniques and used them to tell the story, but more than that – how he took charge of the project and followed through on his idea.”

The Alliance for Community Media is a national organization which advocates the use of public access television for creative expression and civic information, and provides support and networking to local stations across the country.  The Northeast region includes Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. The Video Festival offers 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place awards in a wide variety of categories for both professional and non-professional producers.  Three other programs by FCA producers will be recognized:  “Pops – An Inside Look” produced by Michael Everson and Marc Chavous (2^nd place in the News and Magazine Format), “Thanksgiving

Day Football 2009” produced by Michael Everson (3^rd place in the Sports Category) and “Neponset Valley Philharmonic Spring Concert” produced by Michael Everson (3^rd place tie in Music and Performance category). There were more than 450 entries in the Video Festival, eight of them from FCA producers. The awards will be presented on November 13^th at the Fall Conference in Concord, NH.

The award winning programs have been shown on Foxborough’s public access channels 8 & 39, and will be re-scheduled in the coming weeks.  Viewers can also watch them on streaming video at the FCA website:  www.fcatv.org. For more information about Foxboro Cable Access or training programs that are available to town residents at no charge, please contact Executive Director Michael Webber at 543-4757.