 Jeff Shaw, welcome to Davis Media Accesses in the studio. I'm here today with special guest. This is Aisha Basin. She's the executive producer of Aggie Studios and we're gonna learn a little bit about Aggie Studios today. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad you made it over here. We've been wanting to connect with Aggie Studios. Back in the day when it was Aggie TV, we sort of had some connections, but I'm glad you made it over today. Yeah, we're definitely looking to like reach out to more of the Davis community. So this is a great start. So thanks. So tell me again, your title is executive producer. Yes. When did you start with it? We started out as Aggie TV. Tell me about that first stop. So when I first started the organization or with the organization my freshman year we were Aggie TV and we just didn't feel like the name really encompassed everything we do. We do film, we do TV, we do photography, we do everything and so we switched over to Aggie Studios in May of this year. Okay, and so tell me a little bit about how what it is exactly. Is it a department? Is it a unit or how does it exist within the larger structure? So we have ASUCD which is our on-campus student government and we're technically a unit of them and we operate with another unit called Creative Media. They do a lot of graphics and websites and more media. Creative Media, is that the larger umbrella unit for you guys or how does that? Yeah, so we like if we're looking at the layers it'll be like ASUCD, Creative Media and then Aggie Studios. And so who else is under Creative Media in that scheme of things? They're their own unit too. So we both do media and online production so it just made a natural fit for us to go together. Gotcha and where are you located? Where is the? So our studio is in the basement of the MU on campus. It's called lower free-born. Oh, basement of free-born? Yeah, lower free-born. Near KDVS and near the is the Cal Aggie still down there too? Yeah, we're right across from them. So all the media units are together which is nice since we like to work together. And how many people are currently there and how many people have been? Oh, there's a shot of your studios right there. Thanks for bringing that up. I can see the green screen in the background. Yeah. Which is probably a key thing for such a small studio. Our members working. So how many members do you have about? So on our executive board we have about ten. Wow. And then they're responsible for their each content group so like sports, news, entertainment, creative. Oh, those are anchors for a new show. They operate within teams about 20. So there's about 60 to 80 people and they're all volunteer. Wow. Now 60 to 80 people, there's no way they all fit in that room. No, no. We do our meetings in a different room in the MU but there's different stories happening all the time. So it doesn't clash too often. People come and go and use the equipment. Yeah. So do you own a bunch of equipment or how does that work? Yeah, so we have a bunch of our own equipment. We don't have too much since we're still very small and we have an assortment of computers. So we just like go out, we have mics, cameras, a bunch of editing software. So how do you manage everyone checking it out at the same time? Do you have a system? Yeah, lots of Google Docs and lots of check systems. We have senior videographers who look over all the content before it goes out online. We have social media departments. We have news departments. So there's a lot of checks and balances to make sure things are operating smoothly. And are you the sole executive producer or are there others? I mean do you have to, so you kind of oversee people who oversee other people and it goes on down the line. Yeah, so I guess you'd say like I'm a unit director almost and I operate with the unit director of creative media too. So do you have to go to ASUCD and ask for funds? Is that how that works or how does it? Yeah, I mean they control our budget as well. We also bring in money from client projects. We started doing a lot of private projects. So we've worked with like the American Red Cross up here. We've worked with different organizations throughout Davis and we charged a small small fee but we still charge and bring in money for some of the work we do. So I'll definitely want to ask you more about that. And tell me about the logistics of sort of producing. Tell me first off some of the shows that you produce. Yeah, so most of our content so far has just been videos on campus and then special creative shorts like sketches. We just did a feature film that's gonna come out soon. But our main show right now is a show called Aggie Now and it's only in its fifth week of production. It's a weekly talk show that's supposed to be what we call All Things Aggie. So we have about four anchors which they showed earlier. Right. And they discuss everything from sports happening on campus to some new news, some cultural events, and even some funny stories like what are the squirrels on campus doing? Sure. Let's go, we have a clip of that. Let's go to that briefly and I see a couple, couple seconds of it, about 30 seconds. Hello and welcome to another episode of Aggie Now, your source for All Things Aggie. My name is Miguel. I'm Riley. I'm Alice. And I'm Mika. So last Thursday was actually a really exciting day for us. It was the very first day that the UC Fair Wage Program came into effect. And what that includes is that it basically will cause an exponential increase every year until the minimum wage for UC employees reaches $15 per hour. It also applies to only students or employees who work at least 20 hours per week. That's actually something really interesting because that causes the minimum wage to be higher than the state's minimum wage, which is actually $9 an hour. So what do you guys think? How does that affect the rest of us, you know, students and employees alike? Students are some of the hardest working employees we have on campus here and we definitely need that extra money for, you know, textbooks, guacamole on your burritos, really important things like that. So, you know, while there is some unfairness with the 20 hours a week, we're definitely on the right track to getting students. All right, so let's just a sample of Aggie Now, that's what it's called, right? Yeah. And how often does that come out? It comes out every Friday. All right, so once a week. And where can people see it? So it's on our YouTube page, youtube.com.asucd. It's also on our Facebook page. I think we have an image of that. You can see what a Facebook page looks like if you'd like to see that, a still image of the Facebook page. There we go. So people subscribe to this and they can get downloaded and watch it. You see Davis students primarily. Do you find a lot of students are on Facebook or how do you, how do you chase viewers? Yeah, we operate solely online. That's just our generation now. So we do everything on YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and mostly Facebook. Sure. And do you show any of that on campus as far as, I thought there used to be like in the coffee house, closed circuit TVs and stuff like that? Yeah, we do stuff like that sometimes. We team up with a lot of different other organizations on campus and they'll share it with their people. We'll share their stuff with our people. So it's one big media organization, everyone down there helping each other out. We're trying to be one big family. Maybe even partnering with KDBS or something on news production or what? We actually, they're having a fundraiser coming up and for example, we're doing a promo video for them. Very cool. A little bit about the logistics of that workflow then. Is that something that you switch live or is it all done sort of in post-production, that particular show? Yeah, so it's live to tape but we film two days in advance just because with being a complete volunteer based staff, it's hard to schedule everyone and to find someone to edit. So no one is getting stipends at all like you're not There's three positions that are getting stipends but for the most part it's completely volunteer. I can't imagine yeah having to go, I mean part of your job I assume is going to meetings and doing sort of the part that's not exactly fun. Everyone enjoys and thinks making TV and making media can be a lot of fun but there's a lot that goes on the background so I'm glad to hear at least some people are getting some compensation because in addition to doing this, I assume you're also a student at UC Davis and is that part of the requirement is that you have to be a student to be involved down there? Yeah we treat it kind of an educational atmosphere trying to provide the UC Davis students a place to learn and grow and test what they're doing but we do partner up with alumni sometimes or other people from the community like I said. What are some of your goals for this coming year for the for Aggie Studios? I assume are you now is your position for the whole year how does that work? Yeah so it's for the whole year I took over in June doing some groundwork. Our biggest focus right now is Aggie now we wanted to create a show that really gave some anchor experience and reporting experience for our staff and then with the whole rebranding trying to get our name out there trying to show the community that we're students but we're capable of doing a lot more and we are very professional. Heck yeah there's no reason why not I think which kind of brings the point that sometimes the community of Davis hears about some controversial issues UC Davis is that something that you guys when you decide on topics do you shy away from controversy at all or do you how do you how do you balance you know how to get balanced sides to all that do you have is there journalism background that people bring to it or how does that work? Yeah so we have a whole news department and one of their main well I guess for the whole unit the whole goal is we say communication and accountability if you're gonna present a story you need to bring hard facts and you need to do your research it's one thing to say your opinion and it's another thing to say your opinion backed by facts. We could use you training some of our details here at KDRT yeah yeah no I think that and so do you find yourself doing some training or do people come with all these skills already or how? No so for example like when I started I didn't know anything about filming or editing and we create a space filled with workshops we do reporting workshops filming workshops all the things we're learning from each other just as much as they're learning from us it's a real big team effort well it seems like a lot of educational value I'm glad that you guys are able to you know 70 to 80 students getting involved as a good experience and that's a lot of students only wish it could be a larger program. We're growing we're growing this is only beginning so yeah so I tell me a little bit about how you guys besides growing how do you how does it work for like just getting staying on top of all the new technologies that comes out do you have to purchase do you purchase once a year is it just like it really just depends we try to use what we have as much as possible but of course new things come out things break so we just we evaluated on a year-to-year basis a lot of our staff actually has you know there's other resources on campus too that we'll share with or yeah ACCD is really helpful and backing us up when we need it awesome so we only have a couple minutes left but I want to ask you about the rumor of Freeborn Hall and you know the fact that it's it's not sure what's gonna happen with all the units that are in the lower Freeborn area do you have any sense of what's going on with that or what will the future holds for for I guess creative media for the Aggie for all the for Aggie studios KTVS all that no idea what's happening we have construction happening above us but we don't know what's happening for us underneath but I'm sure they have a plan for us somehow I mean like KTVS has their whole station down there and the Aggie has this awesome room and we have our whole studio so so they'll all end up somewhere probably under the ASUCD umbrella at some other location yeah great we're a big campus great well this has been in the studio of Davis Media Access so we've been talking to Aisha Basin the executive producer of Aggie studios I encourage everyone to go to their Facebook which is right now everything's in transition so you're encouraging people to go watch the episodes at facebook.com slash Aggie studios as you see on the thing there once your website is up with the I assume it's just gonna be Aggie studios org or something yeah actually the exact one right at AggieTV.org is still functioning you can get a general idea of what we do but it's not updated so excellent well this is gonna be a great year for you guys I hope you have a lot of fun thanks for tuning in and I catch us next time here at DCTV Davis Media Access channel 15