Students Participate in STN Challenge  

Students from the TV/Media class recently participated in the 2019 Student Television Network Challenge. 

The STN is a “consortium of schools around the country with media/film/broadcast programs where students are given opportunities to network and compete with each other while receiving feedback from industry professionals.” 

The STN Challenge has multiple categories such as News, Sports, Film, Music Videos, and PSA. The students who participated had to create an idea based on the topic they were given and submitted before the deadline. Norwood High students have participated in the STN challenge before and have won first or second place in the nation more than once. 

According to senior, Stephen Ailinger, “Since 2012 the Mustang Media has won over 150 state, regional, and national honors” 

Sophomore, Ashley Luise was one of the students who was in the group for the sports feature story. The topic the group was given was “Second Wind.” The group of sophomores decided to create an idea, “about a member of the marching band and how difficult it is to continue performing while marching and not being able to stop for air whenever it’s needed.'' 

They received the topic at 9 a.m. on Friday and had until 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday to come up with their idea, create it, edit it, do finishing touches, and submit. The group created an idea by 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, they had to film all weekend, edited on the weekdays and had to miss a couple of classes to put the final piece all together, they were able to submit the finished product by 3 p.m. on Wednesday. 

Luise mentioned that “It was super challenging to meet the deadline” and they had a couple bumps in the road. 

The day the group had received their prompt they came up with an idea but it fell through and they all decided to speak to Mr. Brunt who, “mentioned marching band to us and we took the idea and ran with it.” 

After only 4 hours of their idea being finalized and planned out, they began to start filming their masterpiece. The group made sure to make it perfect and dedicated their time and showing how dedicated they themselves were by staying after school together for a few hours. In the end, they were able to pull it all together, “Our project was about the marching band, specifically Kyle Leonard!” 

Luise was a part of everything and has as much responsibility as everyone else in the group. She “went to both days [they] filmed and worked one of the cameras with two other people. I was also the one responsible for bringing the equipment home.” 

During the challenge, Luise, “super stressed while we [they were] trying to settle on [their] idea.” Luise felt a little stressed during the editing part because they only had a total of three days to complete their editing, and it was her first time editing a project in that short of time”. 

At the end of the challenge when everything was completed and submitted in Luise, “really did enjoy it”. She feels proud of all the work they all completed together.

Senior, Sophia Serratore was one of the students on the short film team. They had the “same time frame and had to use a prop they were given and the title they gave us”. Their title that year was "Do the Math” and the prop they were given was a graded test. They all worked and “created the story all Friday and a little bit into Saturday, spent Saturday and Sunday filming”. They created the story for the two main characters to fall in love with each other that included math. “The ending shot was a little equation that ended up looking like it said I love you, so that was a little corny, but kind of cool”. Serratore did camera shots and double-checked that things are going well and what they planned went smoothly and everything looked the way they imagined. Being apart of this challenge depends a lot on being out of school to be able to finish the project by the deadline.

This year focused on a different topic that was based around Sci-fi and was called "Area 52." The film is about, “a girl who claims that she has seen Area 52” (Vanessa)  and is being interviewed by a girl named, Coco with Locos. The group made sure to include everything that is important, they made sure to have shots of the interview going on, Vanessa recording herself showing evidence of Area 52, and at the end of the film, there is a scene inside of Area 52. Serratore herself plays a scientist in the last scene. 

According to Ailinger, results should be announced around Thanksgiving.