PUHI — “I love all of it! This is really fun,” said Amanda Bail of her experience creating a video public service announcement that took top honors in the 2004 Teen Video Awards Contest on O‘ahu. Bail, a sixth grade
PUHI — “I love all of it! This is really fun,” said Amanda Bail of her experience creating a video public service announcement that took top honors in the 2004 Teen Video Awards Contest on O‘ahu.
Bail, a sixth grade student at Chiefess Kamakahelei School, along with eighth grader Tessie Lumabao, took top honors in a competition that was designed to help spread the word about making the right choices when it comes to drugs and alcoholic drinking and driving.
Bail and Lumabao traveled to the Ward Consolidated Theaters where all 131 entries in the contest were screened.
The program was a special partnership between the state Department of Education, HMSA, Sassy/G magazine, and the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), with Kendyl Ko representing the DOE, and Laurie Young of HMSA making a trip to Kaua‘i to present the prize to the school on Monday morning.
Young said that Bail’s video, titled “Choices,” has already been aired within the HMSA organization during their annual meeting and viewed by a lot of dignitaries with Ko adding that they are working at trying to get air time for all of the entries.
Utilizing some contemporary techniques in framing and drawing back to a black-and-white format, “Choices” focuses on individual students who have all made choices.
Bail’s video took the Best Neighbor Island as well as the Best Middle School statewide division.
Waimea High School won the “Most Comical PSA” award for “The Effects of Drugs” by Tori Kagawa and Teddy Escobar.
Lumabao, who was earlier in the morning toggling between scenes on an computer set up for video editing, said that was the phase she liked the best. Her video, “Children of a Drug User,” portrays a user being tailed by a youngster during their home life and utilizes the black-and-white format for strong graphic rendering, her piece taking top honors in the Most Dramatic arena.
Daniel Hamada, Kaua‘i schools superintendent, dropped in for the presentation and told the group of budding videographers they should be proud of how much they have accomplished.
The two students, according to Kevin Matsunaga, the school’s video production teacher/tech coordinator, spent part of their spring school break at school working on their project to meet a contest deadline. There were other projects, Matsunaga said, but they didn’t get finished in time for submission.
In addition to the most recent winners, Matsunaga said the school has produced other award winning video projects during the school year with Marissa Agena, a former student, winning at the Olelo Awards held earlier this year.
Agena, now a student at Kapa‘a High School, produced a piece on “Reading” that was submitted for this year’s competition, and after taking one of the top awards there, was also considered as a finalist at the Reel Teens competition held in New York.
Matsunaga expressed his pride in knowing that a middle school student could compete on that level, the New York competition drawing a field of 280 entries from around the country.
Other Chiefess Kamakahelei student winners included two sixth graders and two seventh graders, Matsunaga said as sixth graders Randee Layosa and Janessa Grady took awards for their fire safety project while seventh graders Rachel Hamamura and Leighna Kerbawy took awards for “The Importance of Spaying and Neutering Your Pet.”
The latest prize adds to the school’s media department as the school was presented with a special digital video camera with a remote-control tripod by Sony.
Matsunaga added that Leah Aiwohi, another of the teachers at the Chiefess Kamakahelei School, also works with students in creating video projects.
The video clips are to be posted on HMSA’s Web site at www.hmsa.com.
