The concept behind the title, “The Village Green,” is that the Town Green is a meeting place of people and ideas, and it is our hope that the show will serve the same purpose. I say “our” hope because I am one of the producers. With the assistance of my husband Glenn, and with a tremendous amount of support and help from Alecia, I produced the arts & entertainment segment.

It sounded easy enough, when I first heard about the show. All I had to do was put together a 5-7 minute segment, and other people would put together other segments, and, ta-dah! there would be a show.

Compared with the half-hour children’s show I produced for about 2 years, over 10 years ago, it sounded easy as pie.  On The Village Green, I would only be responsible for 5-7 minutes, I would be part of a knowledgeable team, and nonlinear (digital) editing would make the whole editing process much easier than the tape-to-tape editing process I had used on the previous show .

Taping the interviews went well, but it was difficult to condense my 32 minutes down to 5-7. Digital editing wasn’t that easy either, even with Alecia doing most of the work, as she taught me the basics. I have  a whole new respect for film editors. As with editing writing for length and logical format, you sometimes have to toss out content you really like because it is too long or just doesn’t fit in. Unlike editing writing, though, you can’t create new video in the editing studio as easily as you can manipulate words.

It has been an enjoyable learning process though, and I hope that Falmouth residents will watch the show tonight (it will be repeated at other times and dates; check the FCTV web site for schedule details). And, I hope that others will take advantage of the wonderful resource we have in FCTV. A $30 annual membership gives you free access to training and use of equipment so that you, too, can produce segments for The Village Green, or envision and create your own television show.

Anyway, the show on FCTV was an interview show, featuring a woman interviewing a man about his gongs. I wasn’t so much interested in the show as I was in the interviewer, who seemed not only bored, but skeptical of the man and his gongs. He was going on about the mystical powers of the soung of the gong, and saying things like, “You don’t play the gong, the gong plays you.”

Instead of letting that New Age-y sounding statement go, the interviewer asked for an explanation, and the man started talking about how you play a flute by pressing on various keys and blowing, but the gong was completely different. Playing a gong is fairly simply; you hit it with a mallet as you would a musical instrument, but the sound of the gong has an impact on your body as if you, yourself, were the instrument.

He demonstrated, playing what looked like (and I couldn’t really see) numerous gongs of different sizes and with different sound properties. The effect was amazing. I was drawn into the gong sound immediately, stopped working, sat up a little straighter and enjoyed the sound going right through me. The bored interviewer responded too; suddenly seeming more light-hearted and giggly. Maybe because she was sitting right next to the gongs, vibrating along with them.

Turns out there is a whole world of gong meditation and gong therapy using gongs to create a healing “sound bath.” Very soothing! I’m not going to rush out to buy an gong though, the sound of cello music affects me similarly. I’m going to go practice now and enjoy some of those mellow vibrations.