Award-winning video lab produces on campus
It isn’t quite an Oscar, but it is the closest thing the university has ever won.
The Human Resources Research Center, located just south of the towers, houses various divisions of the Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD). One of the most notable offices is located on the third floor. It is K-SAR Video Productions.
K-SAR started 12 years ago as an extension of the CPD with one camera and a tape machine, said Todd Newman, multimedia specialist for K-SAR. Today K-SAR is fully equipped and doing things nobody else does.
The team at K-SAR, led by manager Tom Risk, specializes in creating instructional videos to help those with disabilities. Their clients include Utah State University, various offices for the state of Utah, the health department and the state office of education.
Work produced by the team has attracted national attention. Non-broadcast facilities like K-SAR compete in the Telly Awards, which would be equivalent to the Academy Awards for motion pictures.
In the last 10 years K-SAR has won 17 Telly awards; two silver Tellys (the highest award) were awarded in 2001, Newman said.
“We’re in the process of sending in new entries,” he said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll win something this year, too.”
He said the thing that makes K-SAR stand out from others is it tailors the solution to the client’s needs.
The K-SAR labs house an extensive amount of equipment, including a studio capable of sending out a live feed, four on-site cameras, three editing bays, 3D animation equipment, audio mixing equipment, videoconferencing and DVD authoring equipment.
“We have some cool toys,” Newman said. “As far as I know, the LDS church is the only other group with this kind of technology in the area.”
The equipment used to create DVDs is the same thing Hollywood uses, he said.
K-SAR is also involved with the university extension program to provide distance education. They operate a classroom from the CPD that can videoconference with university extensions all over the state or even to places across the nation.
The team, made up of six full-time and three part-time employees, has even created new technology. John Jeon, Web application and 3-D developer for K-SAR, programmed a videoconferencing system that uses the Internet and allows up to 36 people to see and speak to each other.
One of the most unique projects the team has worked on lately was a DVD for deaf-blind education. It simulated to the viewer what it would be like to have certain vision and hearing problems.
K-SAR differs from other entities on campus because it has clients outside the university and is funded in part through those ventures.
“It’s run almost like any other business,” Newman said.
He said that is really good for the team because they have a budget to meet so they work harder, create a better product and take better care of their equipment.
Newman said part of their job was to take material that is sometimes dry and make it exciting, something people would be interested to see and learn about.
Newman said they got the name K-SAR from a grant that was never funded and the name stuck.
“People say we’re USU’s best-kept secret,” he said.
More information about K-SAR can be found at www.ksar.usu.edu.
-coryhill@cc.usu.edu