Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA

The television industry demands a lot from those who enter the field-especially in the technical, production and engineering areas. The responsibility for preparing men and women to take on that challenge comes primarily from educational institutions. And, a student's ability to enter the industry ready to contribute is directly proportional to the quality of equipment on which they learn and the instructors provided. However, when that educational institution is in greater Los Angeles, there is an added pressure to graduate students of exceptional talent.

Orange Coast College (OCC), located in Costa Mesa, California had the vision and determination to make a difference with the students enrolled through the Film/Television Department. Prior to 2002, the professors were teaching advanced technical knowledge on equipment that were a couple generations behind by today's ever-changing technology standards.

With the creation of a new Fine Arts building, the Film/Television Department was able to wipe the slate clean and build a new production complex from scratch. Hoffman Video Systems was awarded a $950,000 contract to supply and integrate a new multi-camera studio complete with a customized lighting grid, state-of-the-art control room, machine room, community edit room, individualized non-linear editing bays and a specialized screening classroom.

Working closely with the staff at OCC, the Hoffman Video Systems project management team developed a design and working system allowing multiple operations and classroom production to take place simultaneously.

The core of the studio set-up is the machine room handling many video formats and housing a large video and audio router that includes composite, component and serial digital signal flows and is connected to the various other rooms for pathway connectivity.

The studio includes a computerized lighting grid, four wide-screen format cameras working in conjunction with a control room that boasts a twenty-one input multi-format switcher, two workstations for graphics creation, an eighteen-input sound mixer and a producers' console.

The screening classroom contains a thirty-two input digital mixer, wide-format screen and projector, and a custom podium with touch-panel control for all video and computer needs. The audio system in this room allows for 5.1 surround sound mixing and is used for advanced audio students and sound effects recording.

Today, students graduating from this curriculum are the benefactors of a highly advanced production and post-production facility that rivals many of Hollywood's best studios.