#1 Video Production Company in Boston

Empowering your organization to effectively communicate your message.

Charles River Media is a media company headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts that works throughout the United States.

Founded in 2004 as Charles River Media Group, LLC, Charles River Media Inc.’s wide-ranging work in media production, consulting, and distribution includes full-service on-location and in-studio video production services, live streaming, virtual production and event support, educational technology research, television commercial and film producing, and corporate, non-profit and political communications.

Starting in 2020, Charles River Media began purchasing and incorporating complementary businesses to bolster its services such as Fein Productions, Sonic Pixel Media, and LXD Research.

Our Founders

Don Schechter

Founder and CEO, Part-time Professor of the Practice, Tufts University

Don Schechter is the Founder and CEO of Charles River Media. He has worked as a producer and director for television, film, and corporate productions. Don has also directed several TEDxCambridge events, filmed at the Boston Opera House and in studio, utilizing a XR LED virtual production stage. He has been a part-time Professor and Lecturer at Tufts University for over 17 years. Classes include “Fundamentals of Film and Media Production,” "From Script to Screen” and "The Art and Business of Crafting Compelling Media Campaigns." He is one of the Producers of The Arborist, the creator of The Ascendants, and has given a TEDx talk titled "Storytellers, Sci-Fi, & Unreliable Mirrors."

Rachel Schechter

Founder, LXD Research, a division of Charles River Media, Inc.

Rachel founded LXD Research, and her team has published over a dozen reports of research studies with over 10,000 students. Since 2007, Rachel has led product research development teams, most recently as the Vice President of Learning Sciences at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Prior to that, Rachel expanded Lexia Learning’s vision of academic research to a portfolio that resulted in 13 publications in peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and 35 conference presentations (2011-2019). Rachel holds a doctorate from Tufts University and a Masters of Arts in Education from Harvard University.

Core Team

Ian Fein

Director of Production

Jon Shedler

Senior Technical Producer

Morgan Kleinberg

Operations Supervisor, Producer

Andrew Modelane

Junior Editor

Mike Damiano

Technical Director

Kaycee Feldman

Assistant Producer

Key Personnel

Sofia Jimenez, PhD

Lead Researcher

Krystina Raymond

Research Associate

Paul Chase, PhD

Lead Researcher

Bruce Petschek

Producer

Isabella Ilievski

Research Associate

Destiny Riley

Research Consultant

Anna Robinson

Statistician

Rachel Gross, PhD

Statistician

Laura Janakiefski, PhD

Methodology Consultant

The History of Charles River Media Group

In the beginning…
Charles River Media, Inc was originally founded in 2004 as Charles River Media Group (CRMG).

CRMG’s first multi-year endeavor was the creation of hundreds of short informational videos for About.com on topics ranging from computer software to cooking. These videos garnered millions of worldwide views and took place during the infancy of digital video on the web. It was this early contract that allowed Charles River Media Group to quickly grow. CRMG’s offices were first located in Revere, MA and later Brookline, MA. A studio was built in place of an old boxing gym in Newton Center where CRMG maintained an office, editor and colorist workstations, along with a black-box production studio. Quality of production significantly improved when the Red family of cameras was adopted by the organization.

Over time, CRMG’s staff and network matured to include a wide variety of producers, directors of photography, editors, colorists, gaffers, grips, audio engineers, makeup artists, animators, photographers, and voice artists. Charles River Media Group worked in all aspects of production, post-production, and distribution. Clients ranged from large corporate entities such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Adobe, New Balance, and Pearson to small businesses who require the production and nationwide distribution of television commercials or company profiles.

In 2019, CRMG moved to 73 TV Place in Needham Heights, MA, right off of I-95 and next to WCVB. The new facility boasts a larger studio with lighting grid, offices, edit suites, and tons of free parking.

In 2020, we finished our acquisition of Fein Productions and Founder Ian Fein joined CRMG as partner and the new Director of Production.

In 2021, we acquired Sonic Pixel Media, one of our long term partners in live streaming, and Founder Jon Shedler joined as a partner and Director of Engineering.

In 2022, LXD Research became one of our fastest growing divisions.

In 2023, Charles River Media Group, LLC (CRMG) changed entity types and is now Charles River Media, Inc.

Bruce Petschek

Producer

Andrew Modelane

Junior Editor

Anna Robinson

Statistician

Destiny Riley

Research Consultant

Ian Fein

Director of Production

Nearly ten years after founding his own company, Fein Productions was acquired by Charles River Media Group in 2020. Ian manages the CRMG production team both in studio and on-location.

For five years, Ian was a multimedia producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, creating nature documentaries and educational materials. There, he acted as a producer, audio engineer, audio field mixer, camera op (including underwater), safety diver and video editor. Additionally, Ian has associate producer credit on an instructional film “Sea of Sound” about marine bioacoustics and was the audio engineer and field recordist for “Birds of Paradise” that featured scientists documenting wildlife in Indonesia.

He graduated from Ithaca College in 2005 with a degree in Television and Radio and from the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts in 2011 with a certificate in Video Production.