Today’s skilled workforce includes an increasing need for video production professionals who are trained to meet the growing business demand for digital content.
“This is the way the world is moving, with so much digital content being used online and in marketing and branding,” said Meredith Muse, the lead instructor for the Film and Video Production Technology program at Chattahoochee Technical College. “People underestimate how much video shooting and editing, making graphics, and being able to tell a compelling story is now part of our world.”
The Film and Video Production Technology program at Chattahoochee Tech has expanded its scope from television production to include a focus on high-demand digital content creation skills. Students gain hands-on experience in industry-standard editing software that includes Adobe Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, Photoshop, and After Effects. They also gain experience in working with an assortment of professional cameras that range from Electronic News Gathering (ENG) cameras to fixed lens and 4k cinema cameras.
“Our program prides itself on being hands-on. Students will be writing, shooting video, creating graphics, editing footage and polishing products from their first semester to their last,” said Muse. “Graduates will leave here with practical knowledge that is translatable to numerous fields in the media industry.”
Program graduates are qualified to work in news broadcasting, sports broadcasting, post production, social media marketing, content creation, and freelancing. Recent graduate Matt Crowder works as a freelance videographer for WSB-TV Channel 2 in Atlanta. He also stays busy with professional assignments for an assortment of clients. A graduate of Cass High School in Bartow County, Crowder worked for many years as a Cobb County Deputy Sheriff before enrolling at Chattahoochee Tech with the goal of making a career change.
“I chose Chattahoochee Tech because my wife graduated from the college’s nursing program, and I had heard a lot of good things about the college’s TV production program,” said Crowder. “I chose this program because I’m a huge sports fan, and I saw it as a way to get closer to live sports and find a career in doing something that I love.”
Based at the Chattahoochee Tech Mountain View Campus in East Cobb, the college’s Film and Video Production program currently has just over 140 students. These students can earn a diploma or an Associate of Applied Science degree. “We are seeing a lot of demand from students who are wanting to be content creators,” said Muse. “They come into this program with a lot of creativity, and they already have experience in video because they’ve been able to edit photos and videos off their phones from a very young age. We get them to hone those skills and show them a professional way to do it.” These students are guided in becoming efficient editors and compelling story tellers while being grounded in the skills necessary to make them become technically sound professionals across a variety of platforms.
“Not everyone knows how to do this type of work. It’s a commodity, and we treat it as such,” said Muse. “What our students are learning is a skill that is above and beyond what other people’s day-to-day knowledge is of this topic. It’s a specialty. And if you have people doing it who don’t have a lot of training, it can be done poorly. What we’re teaching our students is how to do this work well.”
