Career linked class gives exciting opportunities

Kristi Dulany and Andrew Ford, both juniors at Russellville High School, are developing a short awareness video in the hope of preventing bullying at the Cole County R-1 Schools. The students are learning to film, edit and produce videos in the new multimedia class.
Kristi Dulany and Andrew Ford, both juniors at Russellville High School, are developing a short awareness video in the hope of preventing bullying at the Cole County R-1 Schools. The students are learning to film, edit and produce videos in the new multimedia class.

In the spirit of the humorous silent films, juniors Andrew Ford and Kristi Dulany created a short movie parody of student and staff at Russellville High School.

"Before this, I'd never seen one," Ford said of the original motion picture style.

In an effort to raise awareness about cancer, seniors Faith Shull and Chastin Jones put together a short fictional documentary following a girl's battle through the stages of the disease.

"My favorite teacher had cancer and my aunt died from it," Shull said.

These two projects were among the first semester work students have developed in the new Multimedia class at Cole County R-1 Schools taught by David Coulston.

In addition to individual, creative videos the students also serve their school and community with their production talents.

This semester they filmed and edited to produce a highlight video for the fall sports banquet and a promotional video for the Professional Learning Community initiative.

Among the next projects for the class, Dulany and Ford are gathering footage from Character Council Tribe Times for a bullying prevention segment.

They hope to replace jokes and doubt with the seriousness of anonymous, personal accounts.

Putting a message into multimedia form is a better way than standing in front of people, Ford said.

"This generation is into movies and TV; this is another way for them to watch and let it soak into the brain," Dulany said.

Much of the multimedia students' time is spent working with raw footage, Coulston said.

"It's a learning process for all of us," Coulston said.

In his business classes, he had used the computer-aided editing program.

"Now, we can take it a step further; student can do their own thing," Coulston said.

Rather than a curriculum-based class, the multimedia class is part of a new group of classes designed to expose students to potential careers.

"Here they can delve in and find out what they have an interest in doing," Coulston said.

As long as the content is school-appropriate, students have a "wide-open range of subjects," he said.

The class also produces the school newsletter and project flyers.

Another element to the new multimedia class is a recording studio, where eventually students will host interviews and develop school public service announcements and entertainment.

The school already had the computer software and camera equipment. So to create this class only a green screen and studio lights needed to be purchased.

This career-linked class was an exciting opportunity for Shull.

"I like filming movies," Shull said. "I want to write the movies and my friend wants to be a director.

"We hope to go to school in California to do that."