Bee-TV Helps Students Get Real-Life Film Production Experience

When earlier this month, the students of Bee-TV were there to record it. 

Adviser said in an email that he was there to supervise, but that the students did all the work.  

That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has seen the group in action. During the school year, the students arrive at a half hour before class starts, putting the finishing touches on their daily morning broadcast.  

The five-minute morning show, filled with reminders and announcements, is broadcast live across the school from their classroom-turned-studio every day. When Brecksville Patch visited the group in May, the students had run through the script, typed it into their homemade teleprompters and set up some pre-made videos all before school started at 7:30 a.m.

Gallagher works part-time and, often, isn’t even there in the morning when the students are putting the show together. He began as a part-time consultant in 2007, and a faculty member serves as the adviser each year, observing while students put together the morning show, he said.

, who was a senior this year and now plans to pursue film production in college, had been involved in Bee-TV since her sophomore year. She began as a member of the club, tried out to be an anchor her junior year and became the student director in charge of content her senior year. 

Jesser spoke mainly about the variety of opportunities the Bee-TV students get throughout the year. In addition to their morning broadcasts, students film promotions for school clubs, produce short videos of things that interest them like film reviews, cover sporting events or theater productions – pretty much anything they want, Jesser said.

The group is pretty self-sufficient, Gallagher said. They sell the DVDs they make of different events for income and even try to keep their classroom clean so the janitors don’t have to.

“We just try to make it as fun as possible,” he said.

Bee-TV has been around for 10 years now, Gallagher said – and he would know.

As a student at Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, Gallagher helped create the group. He said that after finding a room full of equipment, the principal at the time let him start a student video productions group. A few years later, the person who had served as the group's adviser let him know she was leaving – just about the time Gallagher was graduating college. He wanted to make sure the group continued, something that would be hard to do without the specific training, so he took on the job. 

Gallagher said he tries to help the students with the business side of video production – he didn’t want the group to just focus on the technical aspects. The programs the students created throughout the year are all online, along with order forms for recent videos. Gallagher said in an email the commencement video would be available soon.