By Riley Mushkin, Reporter
@RMushkinCourant
The Cablevision Educational Access Awareness Awards honor original student videos that have been broadcast throughout the school year on Cablevision’s Educational Channel 78. This year, many students from NCHS submitted their videos to the competition, and seven videos placed.
TV broadcasting teacher Roman Cebulski and film teacher Jennifer Sinski worked together to select videos to submit to the competition, judging from a number of criteria they feel is necessary to do well. “I look at cinematic quality: shot techniques, the way that they’re using the camera, the post-production aspect of it, and the creativity that comes with editing it,” Ms. Sinski said. “I look for standouts that I feel work really well, and run it by Mr. Cebulski.”
Freshman Charlie Hane, who won third place with his video “56 Sweet Street” along with freshman Jack Dunn, knows that this cinematic quality is very important. The two took the time to plan out their video. “Jack and I put a large amount of effort and creativity into the planning of the shots and the script,” Charlie said. “We knew what ‘look’ we were going for, but we needed time during pre-production to figure out how we would do each shot.”
Sophomores Carolyn Kemp and Drew Davis won first place with their film, “Making Maple Syrup”. “We worked really hard on the video and it was a pretty long process,” Carolyn said. “We went back constantly to revise it, and watched it over and over again until it was perfect.”
Many students experienced surprising outcomes at the awards. Sophomore Julia Means received third place for her “China Care Club” video. “Surprisingly, I didn’t even know I won the award until I heard it on the Morning Announcements,” Julia said. “I hope this competition encourages people to get more involved in the film and TV programs here at NCHS, because they’re really special.”
Senior Kate Blasco knows that you can always take something away from one of these competitions. “Give yourself a month, or at least two weeks of planning so you know what you want to include, and have time to find those clips and put them together,” Kate said. “Just remember to play around with it and have fun.”
Impressed with the award outcomes, Mr. Cebulski thinks that the students should be very proud of their work. “These kids put a lot of hard work, effort, and time into their videos in these elective classes, but they don’t get the recognition deserved,” Mr. Cebulski said. “It’s great to be able to look back and look at the things they did and say, ‘Wow, we did some good work’.”
