A new way to learn media

Almost all the students in the high school watch a video at least once a day, and now SPA is offering a class to teach students how to make videos and to understand the process of editing filming, as well as the equipment that goes into making a single video. That is what the Video Arts Class is. It began two years ago in the Upper School. For the first year, it was only a beginning class —since it was the first year, there were no advanced students. This year, four students signed up for the Advanced Video Arts class that was offered. They work alongside the beginning students to imagine, film and edit videos.

The beginning class is where students get to focus on understanding the basics of camera function, movement, and editing. US Ms.Steffany Motta is the only teacher that teaches the beginning and advanced classes. Every class period, she explains how the controls work, and the difference between the different editing sites. Students can loan out the camera equipment, which includes lights, cameras, mics, stands, and other materials to make the videos as authentic as they can be.

Ms. Motta assigns different projects, each one having a goal of teaching the students different ways to film and edit. Through the semester, students are slowly able to create their own gif, stop-motion piece, sound, five-second videos, and finally their own choice of video.

Once they have completed the beginning class they can choose to take the elective again, except this time they are in full control of what they want to do. When they enter the classroom for the first time as advanced students, they have options on what they want to focus on that semester. This semester, as mentioned before, there are only 4 students, but they are all focused on very different things.

Sophomore Gabriella Thompson is making a poetry piece, where she has a dramatic lighting on all of her subjects. Each person says a line in the poem. It is a dark and powerful piece, meant to capture the audience’s attention. The poem that she chose relates to the issues that happen every day in the United States.

“I read the poem and found it to be very powerful and meaningful. I wanted to bring it to a video format, and make the video just as powerful as the words,” Thompson said.

Senior Henry Hallaway is making an exciting and fast-paced video of him and his friends playing basketball on the school grounds. He has tons of different shot types and angles.

Junior Louis Kempainen has found a interest in making music. The Video Art class had a few weeks dedicated to making sound from different resources and areas, one of them being Garageband. Kempainen has spent most of his time creating different upbeat tracks of music.

Sophomore Tana Ososki has been interviewing countless people and is making a documentary piece on compiling questions that she asked her subjects. The point of her project is to prove that everyone has different stories and experiences that make us who we are today. Those different experiences make us all equal.

“I really wanted to do a compilation of tons of people from different backgrounds and ages answering a few simple questions. I thought it would be interesting to see their responses,”  Ososki said.

These four students are all working on completely different mediums, and ideas. But they are all using the same information that they learned in class. This class may be new and different, but it embodies what this generation is today.