Tag Archive: ‘mechanicsburg’

Cumberland Valley High School Creates ad for The Big Read

Click the arrow to start the slideshow of photos from the day.

Recently we coordinated with the Special Interest program at CVHS to host 18 students to learn about video production – the cool part was that none of them were aware of the purpose to the Mystery Trip!It started out with a friend of mine from Jump Street needing a commercial to promote their involvement with The Big Read – part of the National Endowment for the Arts. She had the idea getting students involved with the project. As our discussions went on, it turned into the Mystery Trip for CVHS students to actually create the ad.

I’m a huge advocate of job shadowing, career days, talking up classes at local schools… anything to help them make informed decisions about possible careers. Well, they arrived at 8AM and I had the typical soapbox about video and showed them some of our work. We then went to a meeting area and discussed the career options and had a few of my crew members on hand to share their educational and real-world experiences. It’s now going on 10AM and no one had a clue what was about to take place. Not to mention engaging high school kids in the morning is a feat in itself.

So it’s nearing 10AM and now I let them know what the day holds: A brainstorming session to meet the client and figure out the audience and message; then breaking into groups of 3 headed up by a team member for specific tasks of documentary, writing, editing, graphics, location production and audio. We ate lunch and went at it! The van was loaded and headed for the location for setup. Graphics started gathering information and logos. Audio searched for music. Editing studied other ads for concepts. Writers wrote and got the script approved.

Once approved, Producers headed to the location to work with talent. By 3PM everyone was back at FFP to review the footage but the school day was over. So it actually took a 2nd day for the editing. But I was really amazed what took place that day! The students really took hold of the project and made it happen.

I’m not sure if we created any Spielburgs in doing this but we had a great experience!

Read the online story here on the Cumberland Valley website.