What's New: Studio 21c

kid punches dinosaur

cool science festivalPPLD's Video Center hosted another fantastic green screen experience on Saturday, April 12, 2014 at the Big Cool Science Festival at Colorado College. This time, budding scientists and engineers had an opportunity to visit Mars, hang out in Tesla's lab, or stand on a strand of DNA. Need proof? Take a look at the evidence in our flickr set.

What do you get when you give "kindie" musician Steve Weeks and PPLD TV producer/director Dave Franklyn access to paper, glue, scissors, cardboard, paint, and string? Watch the new music video for Steve’s latest single “Change of Heart” and you’ll find out!

The video, directed and edited by Franklyn, is a colorful romp through an arts and crafts world filled with dancing home-made puppets. This simple approach provides the perfect backdrop to the new single, an up-tempo bluegrass tune about a greedy pig, a grumpy hound dog and Little Miss Fuddy Dud, who all discover that it’s never too late to turn a new leaf over. “When Dave started talking about paper pigs and cardboard clouds, I thought maybe he’d lost his mind”, says Weeks, “but I’ve learned to just trust his artistic vision.”

Weeks has already made his mark on the national music scene with four critically acclaimed CDs, multiple #1 hits on Sirius XM satellite radio channel 78 (Kids Place Live), and a first place award in the USA Songwriting Competition children's music category.

Franklyn, who produces films for the Telly Award-winning PPLD Video Production Center, also directed the live action music video to Steve’s hit single “Bartleby Finkleton Will Not Take a Bath.”

Greedy Pig, an accomplished paper puppet and star of the film claims to be an Oscar contender for his role, although few believe that he is cut out for it.

At a ceremony on Saturday, July 21 in Denver’s Seawell Grand Ballroom, Pikes Peak Library District Multimedia Producer Jamey Hastings was awarded a 2012 Heartland Emmy Award in the Interstitial Program category for her piece, “Colorado Springs Beat: The News Photography of Stan Payne.”

The short documentary chronicles the work of Stan Payne, a Gazette Telegraph employee from 1947 to 1976, and was based on research by PPLD Special Collections Assistant Manager Dennis Daily. The Heartland Chapter Emmy Awards represent excellence in television and media production.

“This is a huge honor,” Hastings said. “There were a lot of great submissions and I’m so thrilled that our piece was chosen.”