Launched 1987 Country United States Broadcast area Brown University | Owned by Brown University Language English | |
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Headquarters Providence, Rhode Island | ||
Brown University Motion Pictures (formerly known as Brown Television, BrownTV and BTV) was a Student television station broadcasting on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Contents
History
Brown Television was one of the most historically rich organizations at Brown University. It began in 1987 founded by Doug Liman, now Hollywood director of “The Bourne Identity” and “Jumper”, among others. It was a student run television network running student made productions both for news and entertainment back in the old days of analog UHF equipment and tape decks. Over time, technological advancements left BTV in the dust. The old analog equipment started to fail and BTV became nothing more than a channel on Brown’s IPTV network broadcasting movies distributed by Swank. This, however, also ended due to contract disputes between Swank’s clients and the use of IPTV for the distribution of the movies. BTV had become nothing more than an empty room with missing and broken equipment and a channel broadcasting a blackscreen 24 hours a day. A group of determined students decided to re-vamp BTV in the late 2000s. At the same time, another small but passionate group of students was trying to reestablish the Brown Film Society’s old production outfit, Brown Film Production. These two groups eventually realized their common goals and agreed upon collaboration and in Spring 2008 the Undergraduate Finance Board allocated the necessary funds to powerfully and tangibly start the reconstruction of Brown TV.
Transition to Brown University Motion Pictures (BMP)
In spring of 2012 the executive board of Brown TV began discussing potentially renaming the organization given its transition from the creation of series for closed circuit television digital broadcast to the semester long production of quality digital short films. By the spring of 2013 the process of re-branding had begun, and Brown Motion Pictures officially launched in Fall of 2013.
Since its establishment as Brown Motion Pictures, the organization has created quality short films, including topics about breakups, waiting rooms, and parkour. Every semester, they premiere their short films for the student population. Their short films are available online.