Lights, Camera, Library: Owls earn top marks in national media contest

The Middle School media students are spreading their wings outside the classroom. Last year a team of students from Chris Schwalm’s Digital Media Production Class placed first in the Student Television Network (STN) National Challenge. This year, students from the class defended their title by placing in three categories, including first place in the Middle School Community Feature category. 

“It’s a testament to the students here. When they embrace a challenge, they really do what needs to be done in order to do their best,” says Schwalm.

In this contest, students are given a prompt and the task to come up with an idea, storyboard, shoot, and edit a video in five days. Our students did it in four. 

“They call it the Superbowl of school age media making,” Schwalm says. It’s a difficult task to take something abstract and complete a project like this with the time constraints given. “It blew my mind.”

The prompt for the Community Feature was “The People Who Run Your School” with the guideline that it may not feature a teacher and must include 10 seconds of nat (natural) sound. In a film titled, “’Moore’ than Books-Librarian Connects Students Through Creativity,” Overlake’s students took first place with a feature on beloved Middle School librarian Rebecca Moore. 

Schwalm loves to see students take their interests outside the classroom as this contest was done entirely outside of class time and not required. It’s his philosophy on teaching: teach students the fundamentals, offer opportunities that extend beyond the classroom, and equip students with resources and mentorship to help them be successful. 

The STN competition is particularly great because even if an entry does not place, the videos are evaluated by industry professionals, and they give feedback on each entry. So whether or not a student places, they still get professional grade feedback on their work. 

In February, a collection of students will be attending a conference put on by the same organization with even more intense challenges where instead of a few days to create a video, they will have mere hours. 

To learn more about the contest and view the winners videos, click here.