Christine Boegemann - November Member of the Month

I learned about PhillyCAM via several word-of-mouth recommendations. Soon after I began my year of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA with PowerCorpsPHL, I reached out to various contacts I knew from my time studying film and media arts at Temple University for advice about how I might be able to access production equipment now that I was in the real world. I did some research and I compared the costs of a membership with PhillyCAM with what it would cost to access equipment through other means or obtain our own production equipment, and the cost-benefit analysis that I created came up heavily in favor of us pursuing a PhillyCAM membership. The decision to join PhillyCAM was an economical solution that enabled me to access equipment that I sorely needed in order to do my job, but it also turned out to have even greater benefits that I didn’t consider, as the PhillyCAM family of staff and members has turned out to be a wonderfully supportive bunch of people. 

Due to my prior experiences with media production and editing, I was able to test out of the basic production and editing courses that are offered at PhillyCAM. I’ve been a little bit of a one-man-show: for most of the short videos that I have edited at PhillyCAM, I have done all the shooting, interviewing and editing independently. However, when it came to preparing for the PowerCorpsPHL PSA that I am currently in the process of editing, that project became a group effort. I participated in pre-production meetings with Antoine, Laura and my supervisor, in which we exchanged thoughts about what we wanted the PSA to look like. I wrote a script, which we then all took apart and put back together. They came out for a day of shooting and did a phenomenal job of making the most out of the time we had to shoot, one of them recording interviews that I conducted, while the other shot b-roll. Being a part of that team was a really great experience for me. It’s very valuable to take time to plan out a shoot and to have support, and for me, I especially appreciate that support during the pre-production process. 

My role as Communications Coordinator with PowerCorpsPHL is an AmeriCorps VISTA position that was created to document and highlight PowerCorpsPHL’s impact and growth. It was important to us to utilize a variety of media and methods to convey this impact, and of course, we wanted video to be one medium used to share PowerCorpsPHL stories. Working with PhillyCAM enabled me to do just that, because it gave our program the ability to access affordable equipment as well as a positive and supportive network. Knowing that there are people at PhillyCAM that are happy to help me whenever I have questions and concerns makes my job more manageable. The sense of support that has come with working in this environment has been invaluable.