Four Cornwall High School students, Mariah Hernandez, Brandon Pettus, Taylor Griffin, and Adam Casey, recently took first place in the annual New York State Skills USA Skills and Leadership Conference. They’ll be moving on to the national competition in Louisville, Ky. next month.
Hernandez and Pettus placed first in the Digital Cinema Production competition while Griffin and Casey placed first in the Television (Video) Production competition.
The seniors are Digital Film and Post-Production students at the Orange-Ulster BOCES Career and Technical Education Center. Since only one team can represent a school in a competition, their instructor, Thomas Dunphy, opted to put Griffin and Casey in the Television Production competition. This put the duo at a slight disadvantage.
GRIFFIN/CASEY
The competition is made up of three parts: a production test, a SkillsUSA test, and then a video submission.
Without knowledge of television production, Griffin and Casey tried studying at the last minute. They were able to answer six of 10 fill-in-the-blank questions correctly.
For the video portion of the competition, the two treated the project like it was a 60-second short film, rather than a commercial promoting SkillsUSA. The premise was, “I discovered SkillsUSA and it energized my life.” They had to overcome a couple of minor obstacles before submitting their final cut.
“We were only allowed to use basic editing,” Griffin said. “No color editing. When we realized it was a gray scale outside (it was cloudy) we thought, ‘what are we going to do?’”
Trying to make a video about how SkillsUSA can energize one’s life seemed like a difficult task without much color, but Griffin and Casey used that to their advantage.
“My evil genius came out,” Griffin said. “We created a sad video and made it where I didn’t have anywhere to go. I discovered SkillsUSA and it energized my life. It was the same message, but a different view.”
Griffin and Casey had never made it to the state competition, and the school seemed to be jinxed with fourth place finishes in the television portion.
When the results were read in ascending order, the duo thought for sure they had placed fourth after the first two teams were named. When their names were called as the first place finishers, they just looked at each other in shock.
HERNANDEZ/PETTUS
Hernandez and Pettus were making their second trip to the state competition. Last year they finished fifth. They had to create a three to five minute video with a surprise ending.
In “The Salesman,” they wanted to play on the stereotypical door-to-door salesman.
“They go to your door and they’re kind of annoying trying to push their product on you, doing whatever it takes to get you to buy,” Pettus said. “I played a salesman and I would go to people’s doors, but before I could say what I was giving away I would get rejected. We did a few gags based on that. In the end it turns out the salesman isn’t trying to sell anything, but give away a large amount of money.”
As the third and second place winners were announced, Pettus and Hernandez thought they hadn’t won. When their names were announced it took them a moment to realize it was them. They screamed and ran on stage.
The students expect a similar format in the national competition and look forward to the $10,000 scholarship prize, each, to help pay for college.
The competition, which takes place from June 22 to 27, will force them to miss their BOCES graduation, but they’ll leave the competition a day early so they can graduate with the rest of their Cornwall Central High School class.
