Video production skills continue to be in ample supply at Foothills Composite.
Students from the Okotoks high school took first and second place in the Skills Canada regional competition at SAIT in video production to continue a winning tradition for the program.
“It’s nice when we take first and second because that’s a pretty clear indication that we’re dominating,” said Ben Stevens, new media and video game design and development teacher at Foothills Composite. “And it’s all of the schools in Calgary and region and for little old Okotoks to place consistently is pretty awesome.
“I’m really proud of them, they go in and have fun with it and put together good stories that the judges give feedback on and rank as they did.”
The gold medal-winning duo of MJ Hansen and Orianna Rodriguez-Saltron were excited to see visual poetry as the prompt for the video production competition.
Being able to play off their strengths of creativity and journalism, the gold medallists had to adjust on the fly and tried to be proactive in catching scenes all over the Calgary campus.
“We tried to brainstorm, but realized we wouldn’t get access to some of the places we wanted to film,” Rodriguez-Saltron said. “We went from playing around with the idea of life and death and weren’t able to get access to anything else so we went with telephones.”
In the end, a theme of existential dread with tension building and creative lighting was produced in the short film.
“We had an idea of who would be judging, but didn’t come in with high expectations,” Rodriguez-Saltron said. “It’s a little surreal, we made something and people like it, that feels good.”
The students credited their learning environment with Stevens providing opportunities through challenges which mimic what the Skills Canada competition will look like.
His teaching also emphasized not using a ton of dialogue, which proved helpful for a visual poetry prompt.
“We came into the competition saying, ‘We’re going to have fun, it’s our last year at the school and this is our send-off,’” Hansen said. “It’s kind of validating for both of us.”
In preparation for provincials, the team has looked at trends of past year’s winners and the type of prompts that often come up.
It will be a return trip to provincials for Wynn Brown and Kiyan Karimaghaei. At regionals, the silver medallists produced a humourous take on visual poetry, a calculated risk that paid off.
“It’s a video about a student who’s studying and he’s hungry, so he goes over to the vending machine for different options,” Karimaghaei said.
“He sees a bag of chips and he says this is the one, he daydreams about it and his future with it and then he gets sent back to reality. He buys the chips, he opens it up and there’s nothing in there.”
Going back to the provincial stage, they’re armed with experience to take on what can be an intimidating environment over two days versus one at regionals.
“It’s very different from regionals,” Karimaghaei said. “It’s more based on the trade sector and there’s people that judge that are outside of academia, it’s professionals that work.
“Our prompt last year was how AI will affect trades. If you’re good at telling a story, but you’re not good at the more corporate stuff, you’re going to suffer there. It’s 5,000 people in this one building and you’re just trying to get filming.”
The Skills Canada Alberta Provincials run May 8-9 at the Edmonton Expo Centre. Top-three finishers among the Grade 12 competitors also earn scholarship money at the event.
“Last year, we could have been a little under-prepared and if we paced it faster, because we were quite slow with it, I think we would have had a much better chance,” Brown said.
“And I think that’s what we should go in with this year. We’re more prepared, we know what’s going to be there.”
