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Lights, camera, uniforms! It may sound like an odd combination, but it's the order of the day at the world's largest training school for video and audio production. Established by the Department of Defense (DoD), the Defense Information School (DINFOS) is located just outside of Washington, D.C., at Fort Meade, Md. At the state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar educational facility, the DINFOS mission is to train military and civilian personnel within the DoD and other federal agencies and students from select foreign nations in broadcasting, video production, combat documentation, journalism, photography, broadcast systems maintenance, and public affairs. In short, DINFOS teaches modern media creation skills and trains the military communicators of today and tomorrow under the motto “Strength Through Truth.”

The school consolidates all military AV training and teaches approximately 4,000 students per year from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. More than 60 percent of the students are in their initial career training following basic boot camp, and upon successful completion of the two-month training, they will be stationed at American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) outlets, military bases, United States Navy ships, and various government agencies around the world.

Designed as a state-of-the-art training facility with high-tech AV equipment, DINFOS inhabits more than 230,000 square feet. The facility contains several general purpose and computer-equipped classrooms, maintenance and photographic laboratories, four network-caliber TV studios, professional radio studios, and all the necessary administrative and office space for faculty and staff. To facilitate all this learning, the school has 280 military instructors and support personnel from all the military services, as well as 32 civilian staff members. The American Council on Education recommends that DINFOS graduates receive college credit for classes offered at the school, and the Society of Broadcast Engineers has certified and approved the school's curriculum in broadcast engineering.

While DINFOS is about giving its students professional media skills, it's also serious about their military training. “We're training our students to work as professional announcers, videographers, broadcast engineers, and journalists, but we're also training them to work in a military environment,” says Col. Hiram Bell Jr., Army. “In addition to their educational classes, each military service has its own student detachment [that] conducts service-unique military training.” Despite any inter-service challenges, the consolidation of five military training schools into one has resulted in millions of dollars in cost savings while providing a quality education as quickly as possible.

Just under two months of training is not much time to turn out a broadcaster who can do almost any job at a radio or television station, military or civilian. The Broadcast Operations and Maintenance Department trains students in three distinct disciplines: broadcast writing and announcing skills, radio operations, and television operations. Many classes have fewer than 24 students, and the instructor-to-student ratio varies by course. Students receive a lot of one-on-one instructor time during the intensive course of instruction, some of which is self-paced.

“Most of the students arrive with no broadcasting experience or background. Before they can graduate from their 54 days of training, they must write and voice news, sports, and spot announcements; write and produce radio news packages and radio spots; program, prepare, and host radio music programs in all popular formats; write, light, shoot, and edit television news packages and spots; and be familiar with every position required for a TV newscast, from technical director to talent,” says James Gilbert, department head of the Broadcast Operations and Maintenance department at DINFOS.

Pfc. Leslie Angulo, Army, and DINFOS instructor Sgt. Timothy O'Bryan, Air Force, practice field shooting positions.

Students also set up and run a radio station in a simulated combat environment to prepare for duty in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, which is where some will land within six months of graduation. DINFOS puts both the students and the equipment through tough training on very short deadlines. “That training will soon include electronic newsgathering and video field production in a combat environment as well. We also have a three-week course that teaches advanced electronic newsgathering and advanced nonlinear editing with Avid Media Composer,” says Gilbert. “In addition, we have a course that prepares our broadcast station managers to run AFRTS stations at U.S. bases worldwide.”

But what happens when gear breaks down at some faraway base or on a ship at sea? The school also trains the technicians who maintain and repair the government's media production equipment. “To graduate, repair students need to demonstrate their ability to maintain the gear, troubleshoot it down to the component level, and repair it,” said Gilbert. “And that's every piece of gear we use in our radio and television stations overseas: cameras, computer systems, satellite receivers and decoders, transmission equipment, television monitors, radio audio boards, distribution amplifiers, character generators — everything.”

The range of learning levels, technical knowledge (or lack thereof), and cultural backgrounds at DINFOS would challenge any educator. “The instructors here face the challenge of harnessing a myriad of differences, as the students report from all over the U.S. They may have someone with no video experience sitting right next to a person who has done professional productions prior to joining the service,” says Lt. j.g. Steven James McClelland, Navy, department head of the combat documentation courses. “Our ultimate goal as instructors is to raise the students to one high standard in preparation for them deploying with operational units during times of war.”

DINFOS instructors come from the ranks of military broadcasters and visual information specialists around the world. The school runs a four-month program to train new teachers. Upon certification, they work at the school for about three years, and then they return to units in the field and fleet to lead the broadcasters and visual information specialists they trained. To keep up the high level of educational quality, one-on-one interaction with students, and be able to graduate a professional communicator or videographer in less than 60 days, the Broadcast Operations and Maintenance Department employs more than 53 instructors and the Combat Documentation Department has 49 more.

DINFOS classrooms and training facilities are filled with state-of-the-art video cameras, monitors, microphones, editing computers, and audio equipment. In the TV courses, students use Panasonic AG-DVC200 cameras, Panasonic DVCPRO decks, and for postproduction work, the Avid Xpress and Avid Media Composer nonlinear editing systems (both for Windows-based PCs). DINFOS has the largest editing facility in the world, with dozens of Panasonic DVCPRO editing systems used in the basic courses. To prepare so many broadcast videographers, the school has 42 Avid NLE stations in the Broadcasting Department and 48 more Avids in the Combat Documentation Department (the government now uses nonlinear editing almost exclusively). Field video cameras are Panasonic DVC200s supported via Vinten Vision 3 Tripods. Additionally, the combat documentation video production course utilizes the rugged and highly portable Canon XL1 DV video camera for the acquisition phase of training.

Training studios are divided into six modern newsrooms set up to resemble, and named after, various AFRTS stations around the world. There's also a large TV master control room and studio with a few large Panasonic WV-F565H studio cameras on dollies and a news set so students can rehearse their newscasts. For radio training, DINFOS students use Audioarts Engineering RD-12 digital radio consoles, Denon DN-951FA CD cart players, Broadcast Electronics AudioVault digital audio storage and studio system, and Adobe Audition digital audio editing software.

New digital video and audio products and technologies are changing both the way media is created and how it is taught. “Obviously, technological changes have a big effect on our training. We constantly revise our training to teach what our broadcasters really do in the field and the tools they use,” says Gilbert. “The U.S. military services are our main customers. They tell us what they want their broadcast journalist to be able to do in the field. At DINFOS, we train by task and not by equipment. For example, the task may be to operate a nonlinear editing system, not operate an Avid Media Composer. We've been training on nonlinear editing systems for many years, but only recently did we reach the point at which we were sure we could stop teaching linear editing as well. This frees us up to move forward with more changes.

DINFOS students must be able to perform all the jobs at a TV or radio station. Here, a student uses a studio camera for a practice newscast.

“We're enhancing our field production training, and combat videographers are hitting the combat zone with a camera and a laptop and uploading video packages directly to DoD satellites,” he says. Students in the combat documentation courses are also taught to be highly mobile. Deployed combat camera videographers travel with entire production suites in their backpack and transmit video directly from the field.

The training is all designed to be as real world as possible. “We train like we fight. As much as funding will allow, we try to mirror the operational experience in order to produce the highest caliber student,” adds McClelland.

While pride in one's branch of service is still important in this day of the multi-service and multi-national force, it's also important to have a wide variety of media and military skills. “The biggest challenge facing today's military broadcasters is maintaining proficiency when asked to do so many different jobs,” says Gilbert. “We can't afford to breed specialists because of the way we do business. Our broadcasters have to know how to do every job at the station — that's military radio and television. Doing all of those jobs well can be extremely challenging, especially as the technology rapidly changes. On the up side of that is what motivates many of our students: the job of a military broadcaster never gets boring.”

And military videographers must be able to do it all under fire, sometimes literally. “We emphasize to every student that to be a good broadcaster you must first be a good soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. You never know when you might have to put down that microphone or camera and pick up a weapon,” says McClelland.

Furthermore, officials believe that multiple military branches training together adds significantly to the mix. “When you get all the services working together, students get to learn all about the different cultures and values. Also, when they get to the field they'll be working in joint-service environments. By training now as a team they're one step ahead,” says Gilbert.

“The role of military communicators will continue to grow in importance as the U.S. improves its ability to win the all-important information war,” adds Bell.

Special thanks to Capt. Philip T. Nizoloski, Air Force.

A 1978 DINFOS Graduate and former U.S. Navy photojournalist, Video Systems contributing writer Tom Patrick McAuliffe is an author, entertainer, and video creator living in Hawaii.

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.

When it comes to the Defense Information School, I know firsthand the kind of quality education it provides. The skills I learned there as a student I've used every day over the past 25 years. I graduated from an advanced photojournalism course in 1978 and then served on active duty as a U.S. Navy photojournalist (NEC 8148), at the Atlantic Fleet Combat Camera Group on tours as a videographer for eight years, and later at The Chief of Naval Education and Training working at the monthly publication Campus Magazine. I traveled all over the world with my camera and even did a short stint between “A” School and advanced training doing Hometown News Service releases on sailors stationed onboard several ships in the fleet (see Dream Job on p. 82).

Today, DINFOS graduates are stationed around the world at various bases and onboard U.S. Navy ships doing a wide variety of media jobs from print to photography to broadcasting and video production. For example, The American Forces Radio and Television Service has almost a dozen stations around the world (and more at sea via Shipboard Information, Training, and Entertainment (SITE) systems on ships) that bring our soldiers, sailors, and airmen a touch of home programming. “Wherever our service men and women are stationed, we try to provide that touch of home for them in the form of radio and television. Whether onboard Navy ships at sea, on the Demilitarized Zone in [Korea], in Iraq or Afghanistan, our broadcasters are there serving those who serve,” says McClelland.

Meanwhile, Stars and Stripes newspapers in Europe and the Pacific and other service magazines such as All Hands and Soldier Magazine use DINFOS print grads, and various military services use the hundreds of videographers and photographers that graduate from the institution each year.

Visual technology has definitely changed since I went through the training, but the time I spent at DINFOS and the media skills I learned there have helped me throughout the rest of my professional career. The training and experience DINFOS students receive are highly marketable if graduates decide to leave the service and can lead to great assignments if they decide to make the military a career. A few years ago, I was honored to visit the new multi-million dollar Ft. Meade facility and speak to a graduating class of young media professionals. And one thing that hasn't changed since I graduated is that DINFOS graduates are still going to great lengths to bring back footage — anytime and from anywhere.
— TPM