Saint Rose TV Premiere Night: A Forum for Feedback

By KATE PIERCE
Contributing Writer

A crowd just shy of 50 people attended the viewing of the first four episodes produced by the Saint Rose Television Club Thursday, March 31.
The “SRTV Premiere Night” began with a few opening remarks from the club’s president, Samuel Lund. He shared with the audience a brief history of the club, from its formation this past October to present day. He also announced that during the event the club would post two of the episodes on their Youtube channel before letting other members of the club share the ideas behind each different episode theme.
Jamiless Sosa spoke about the segment that she founded, “Knightly News.” She described its purpose to cover campus, local, national, and world news, adding that she is looking for more students willing to be on camera as news anchors.
The episode was hosted by Lund, James Wing, and Vice President Theodore Stabile. Lund and Wing spoke about the résumé critique week opportunity available through the career center, the recently arrested Saint Rose student, the terrorist attack in Brussels, and the Saint Rose women’s softball team’s loss in their first game. Stabile appeared in the segment to talk about the weather for the week.
Lund described the purpose of the segment “One Take Tutorials” as a series of instructional videos that are taken in one continuous shot.
In the club’s first episode of this segment, Stabile and Jacob Lillman demonstrated the “proper” way to give a handshake, and how to point to a person or group with three fingers so to not come across as “accusing.” Many audience members laughed at Stabile’s line, “This is a team effort here,” while demonstrating his handshake with Lillman.
Secretary Tanner Coon explained the purpose of a segment he created, titled “Saint Reviews,” which he described as serving as a platform for debates about movies, video games, or books that members of the Saint Rose community would like to hear about.
The first “Saint Review” was hosted by Coon, Tabales, and Nerys Jimenez. It revolved around the movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Overall, the three students recommended watching it only as a way to pass time if you have no other alternatives.
“The movie itself could have been avoided, honestly,” Jimenez said.
Stabile spoke in detail about the segment “Saint Rose Fireside Chats” in which several members of the club discuss topics chosen by vote from the Saint Rose community.
The episode that was shown to the audience hosted discussions about Saint Rose wifi, dining hall food, and partners and video games. The episode starred Stabile, Marc Tabales, and Aaron Striano. The students bantered back and forth about the three topics, which included Tabales claiming that the wifi is inadequate for the number of users on campus, Stabile talking about his “dinner date Jeffrey the rubber duck,” and Striano discussing the differing tastes in video games between him and his girlfriend.
“It’s basically millennials talking about stuff for 15 minutes,” said Stabile. “I’m hyped to see where it goes.”
After viewing an episode, the E-Board allotted time for an open forum for the audience to give feedback. Each episode received ample response from the audience.
“The ISIS news story seemed to jump out,” said Paul Ferguson, about the “Knightly News.” “There are plenty of other news sources covering it.”
Several audience members suggested that a spoiler alert should have come earlier for the “Saint Review” episode, in addition to working towards an actual debate rather than a discussion.
“I don’t think that any of the episodes were bad, but improvements can be made on them all,” said David Judd. “My biggest critique is that there was an unprofessionalism about the way that they dress.”
In addition to spoken feedback, audience members were also provided paper slips, which they could use to rate each segment on a scale of one to five, with space to leave additional comments.
“I heard everyone’s feedback, and I’ll work to apply it,” Coon said.
Before the event, Lund spoke to members of the club about avoiding the instinct to explain and provide excuses in response to feedback from the audience.
“We’re more attached to our work because we put in the effort, but we really need fresh eyes to help us improve,” said Lund. “Getting inside the audience’s mind is key to a good program.”
Moving forward, Lund hopes for the club to put on an annual premiere event at the beginning of next semester in addition to a finale event at the end of the semester after that, to encompass a full school year of programming.
“The feedback we received tonight was extremely intellectual and we can use it to better ourselves,” said Klarissa Hoyt, a member of the club. “We can only go up.”