The first overall meeting for volunteers interested in helping with the 32-hour production of DM Live 2005 was held last night in West Hall.

The idea of covering DM started years ago, but last year was the first time that the entire 32 hours was covered, said Jay Schell, executive director for DM Live 2005.

” It doesn’t matter what your major is as long as your a student on campus, we’re pretty much open to it,” he said. “It’s a way for people who aren’t experienced with TV to do something for DM, but also to get some experience with something that you have never done before.”

Segments of the broadcast will be aired on the Wood County Cable channel 6, but viewers can access the entire broadcast through the Internet stream page, Schell said.

“We had over 600 people online watch our Internet stream,” he said. “People outside the U.S. are watching what’s happening in small town BG.”

Through working with the production last year, Rebecca Baldwin, executive producer for DM Live 2005, realized how much the communication industry could touch people.

“It was like I could share what I knew with these people who knew nothing about it,” she said.

Last year, staffing was one of the challenges of producing the 32-hour event.

“It took 90 volunteers and we were still short a couple of people over night,” Baldwin said.

Coordinating the large number of volunteers who are usually not highly experienced in television, and training them sometimes hinders production, Schell said.

“Everyone watches TV, but they don’t understand what it takes behind,” he said. “It’s not just one continuous camera, it’s multiple cameras, multiple microphones and you have to manage all that.”

The goal of the 32-hour production is to give viewers a sense of what it would be like to actually be at DM, Schell said.

“TV is about telling a story,” he said. “Our job is to tell you what’s going on and make you say ‘maybe I want to go out there.'”

A soon-to-be-member Chris Gordon, is joining the DM Live 2005 crew in hopes of using his high energy personality to spice up the broadcast.

The success of last year’s production initially grabbed Gordon’s attention.

“What drew me in was seeing the way that it went last year and knowing that you’re doing this for the kids,” he said.

The turnout from the community was amazing last year, Baldwin said.

“It was amazing to know that faculty and staff and students and people who are attending BG High School, TCOM majors, non TCOM majors, journalism majors, non-journalism majors, everybody was there,” she said.

The expectation for this year’s production is even greater and the focus throughout it all has remained that it is all for the kids.

“You realize that these kids aren’t fighting to dance, they’re fighting to live and then you realize that you can share it with the world,” Baldwin said.