Get to know Film Club

By Kandice Williams

With the arrival of the 2021-22 school year, most students and teachers here at MVHS are navigating getting back into the routine of having a successful school year. One thing, however, that arrives at the beginning of every school year is something that most students are familiar with: clubs.

Here at MVHS we offer a variety of clubs for a multitude of interests. FFA for the more agriculture-invested students, art club for the more creative, and even archery for those who have a passion for hitting the bullseye, literally. With all these choices it's easy for students to look past clubs that they might not have even realized were an option or are potentially unfamiliar with, such as Film Club.

When you think about film, most people are met with the visualization of movies and the divine world of cinema, but here at MVHS Film Club is much more than watching movies or analyzing scenes. It's about making your own.

Film Club makes it their goal every semester to successfully produce and shoot their own self-made short film. Students get to navigate and discover the real production skills it takes to shoot and produce a video, focusing on having fun while also creating art.

For those who might be interested in a future in acting or in the performing arts, Film Club just might be for you. The club offers acting opportunities alongside camera work. Students get the opportunity to be creative and express themselves through group-created characters that are played by the students who choose to delve into the acting portion of the club. For those who don't like camerawork or being on screen, the club also offers writing and editing positions.

Those who enjoy creating elaborate scripts can also join, getting the chance to use their elaborate creativity to the fullest potential by writing lines and scenes for the actors to bring to life in the movie. This is a great option for those aspiring directors and film writers. Editing is also another option for students. This is a great skill for people to learn or even grow, especially for those who might be interested in using the skill for their future careers. The editors get to cut and organize the film through transitions and overall have control on how the final product will look like

Ultimately, Film Club is a great opportunity for any student here at MVHS. Through acting practice, camera work, editing and writing, students can immerse themselves into the world of how movies and short films are created. If you're a student who is looking for a new club to join, try film club, and quite literally shoot for the stars! You might just fall in love with the world of film.

Superintendent Scott Cook had hoped students would never have to see evidence of the work that had to be done on the high school building’s HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system. But, according to Mr. Cook, “Each unit was specifically designed to work in a particular area and had to be custom fabricated to function properly.”

Despite careful project planning, there was nothing to be done when “suppliers were unable to meet the deadlines,” Mr. Cook said, which “created a domino effect” that led to a long delay for final completion.

High school head custodian Marty Immekus, who was on site during the entire installation process, said, “The workers did an awesome job, working fast and getting ready for the units, but they could only do so much because the factories and the manufacturers of these things--I mean, you just can’t go to a Walmart or a Lowes and get an air conditioner and put it in place.”

When she entered the high school for the first time, freshman Ava Bellis said she looked up and “thought something might fall out at first.” She had been disappointed that her summer school classes were located at the middle school because she had hoped for a head start in learning the high school building, but once she saw the evidence of construction, it all made sense. Besides, she said, the high school building isn’t that hard to get around in after all.

This delay initially caused some areas of the building to be warmer than others. Until the middle part of September, media center specialist Trish Johnston’s library area’s only access to air conditioning was in Ms. Johnston’s office. But, she pointed out during the installation hassle, “several students have commented on how the warmth in the library feels good because the new AC in the rest of the building is extremely cold.”

“I have been very appreciative of the efforts of staff and students to make the best of a less than ideal situation,” Mr. Cook remarked. He also said he’s grateful to CTS Group, a construction partner in the project, for “providing air conditioning in areas where we knew the delay in unit arrival would be significant.”

Mr. Immekus noted before units were fully installed, “Hey, it’s going back in and we started school. It might be a little crazy not having ceilings in place and everything but at least we got air in some places and it’s getting better every day.”

He also thought students should know they are lucky to have air conditioning “because we didn’t have it when we were in school.”

Computer applications instructor Bridgett Schmutz, whose classroom housed one of the temporary units, said, “Besides a puzzled look or two, the students haven’t said much about it. It is an eyesore and taking up seats in the classroom, but it hasn’t impacted learning at all.”

Matvey Rotsevenkov, a senior, got to see much worse conditions when he attended band camp this past summer. The only hassle Rotsevenkov claimed was that before final installation was completed, the back band door had been blocked by the temporary air conditioning unit, forcing members of the percussion section to carry their instruments many extra steps through the commons area rather than straight from the band room.

The inconveniences of this renovation, Mr. Cook assured us, were absolutely necessary. The alternative, he explained, was possible “failure in winter months, which may have resulted in burst piping and flooding” due to “rust particles...flowing through the old piping [from] corrosion.” Pictured below are photos Mr. Cook supplied, each revealing the “buckets of these particles in our old system” which were “clogging individual units and causing them to fail.”

Mr. Immekus was there when the problem was discovered in the boiler room, where the whole system starts. This is when he said the workers found water coming back into the building from the building’s ground heat source.

“When they went to cut the pipes,” Mr. Immekus explained, “there was all this, you can only imagine, the black sludge, is what it looked like, and it just came gushing out of the pipes...all over the floor, we were using squeegees and shop vacs to get it up off the floor, and I was filling up every trash can I had. And we were like, ‘Okay, well that isn’t going to work.’”

“The engineering [of the style of pipe] has gotten smarter” since the time period when the original HVAC was installed more than 20 years ago, Mr. Immekus explained. “The pipe that we had was a galvanized pipe, and it was around 4” [in circumference], but what was going on was the inside was closing up, kind of like an artery. Everything we have now is like a polyurethane pipe that should never do that.”