In case you didn’t already know, Telestream’s headquarters is tucked away in the beautiful Sierra foothills town of Nevada City, California. This week our local homeless shelter, Hospitality House, is putting on a benefit concert at Utah’s Place, named for the late local musician Utah Phillips.
Internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter Chuck Ragan will be joined by multi-instrumentalist Brendan Phillips (son of Utah Phillips) to present an exclusive online benefit concert for Hospitality House directly from Utah’s Place on Thursday, August 7, at 6:55 pm (Pacific Time). The show is the first in the series, “Live at Utah’s Place,” performed via Stageit.com, an online venue where artists perform live shows that are never recorded or archived. Viewers can interact directly with performers during the show by asking questions, making comments, and requesting songs.
We spoke with Dick Mentzer, a volunteer videographer, about Hospitality House’s involvement in the community and the exciting live shows they plan on producing.
“Chuck Ragan, in offering to do a benefit concert for Hospitality House, introduced us to the idea of live streaming his benefit performance. Chuck has successfully done numerous live stream performances through web stream service Stageit using just his laptop camera and a USB microphone. Working with Telestream’s Doug Lautzenhiser we came up with the idea to do a two camera studio style production using Wirecast. Telestream generously offered the software and tech support. My fellow videographer Mark Triolo and I volunteered (naively) to put together the production with the help of Telestream’s Tom Prehn and Andrew Haley.
I’m providing a low end Windows 8.1 desktop with i3 processor and 8GB RAM for the project. So we can use SDI (or HDMI) cameras, I installed two BlackMagic DekLink Mini Recorder cards. After the Telestream team gave me some hands on instruction with Wirecast, I’ve been creating some simple graphics and learning to handle some of the basic board type functions.
If we are successful with this first “Live at Utah’s Place,” Chuck and Joanna Robinson, Hospitality House’s Development Director, anticipate there will be more performers who will volunteer to do live stream benefit performances for the shelter. The late Utah Phillips had admirers and fans across the country, and being able to reach out to them by live streaming these and other events could make a significant contribution to Hospitality House fundraising efforts.” Dick Mentzer
If you are free Thursday night, sign up to watch some great music, and support a good cause. The more viewers they get, the more they can help those in need! We’ll be there, will you?
