Braves TV, Stray Dog Production efforts merge

A media lab class and a student group working with Ottawa University marketing have come together into one class to appeal to more students.

Stray Dog productions and Braves TV are now going to be one class taught by Instructor of Speech Ryan Louis.

"Putting the classes together opens up a video lab to people who wouldn't normally take it," Louis said. "It gives students a chance to work on their portfolio."

Annie Noll, the Social Media Specialist for OU's marketing department, helped to put the two productions in one class. She said they are not merging in the sense that they will still be their own independent productions. The classes will just be in the same room at the same time.

"Stray Dog and BTV will still own their own brands," Noll said. "The future of BTV now that it is part of the video production class can give something to the students for their hard work, because before, they didn't get credit."

Noll calls herself the "client." BTV thinks of ideas, pitches them to her and others in marketing and they give them the go- ahead or a no.

Michael Matos is a part of the Stray Dog Productions and is excited to get ideas from the members of BTV so he has people to bounce ideas off each other. Matos thinks this is a chance to see really great work come out of one class.

"Some people are better at marketing and some are better at the creative aspect," he said. "Either way it gives someone who is interested in production a chance to test their skills and throw out some ideas because two minds think better than one."

The purpose of BTV, according to Noll, is to make great videos for social media that will appeal to high school student while also marketing through a blog and e-mail campaign. With BTV now being part of a class, Noll said it is getting closer to happening.

Separate from BTV, Louis said Stray Dog is more of a long-term process that works in conjunction with marketing to produce films that could eventually be shown at film festivals.

Matos said they have some really cool ideas in the works but what he really wants to see is the whole student body to come together and get involved in what they have planned.

"I can't reveal any ideas or anything we have planned because I want everyone to be surprised about what we have come up with," he said "All I can say now is that our biggest thing is to help out the school and community."

Noll, Matos and Louis are all excited to see the ideas come together and see how involved the student body is and how they react to them.

"I really only see good things to come with Stray Dog productions and BTV working together and hopefully we can just get most of the student body to join in," Matos said.