Everyone has a story; what’s yours?
NHTV students Ally Pfeiffer and Sydney Dicarlo (left)filmed their randomly-selected student Bryce Schmuhl and learned many interesting facts about his life. Lauren Kelly conducted the interview while Lyla Padden kept track of facts and noted them on the storyboard. The project was very labor intensive, but the end result was fascinating and enlightening.
Submitted by RHMS eighth grade student Maria Pangalos; photo courtesy of Scott Melanson
Students at Rocky Heights Middle School (RHMS) in the Nighthawk Television (NHTV) program recently undertook an enormous project filming a documentary about a randomly-chosen student.
Imagine taking a map and throwing a dart at that map and landing on a town. From there, taking a phone book of that town and choosing a name at random. Finally, imagine conducting interviews and creating a short film about that person and all aspects of their life.
This is what the students did, only on a smaller scale. Based on a CBS Television segment called “Everyone Has A Story,” students threw a dart at a list of all the people in the school and then proceeded to produce a documentary film about them. RHMS students truly believe that everyone does have a story, and are proving that by broadcasting their subject’s story for everyone in the school to see.
Naturally, there were a few hardships in the process of documenting another person’s life. Some students said that they asked their subjects to speak louder or to do voice-overs which really helped them a lot. Other times there were some scheduling conflicts, but they resolved them by meeting before school. The NHTV students spent countless hours documenting their subjects’ lives by interviewing them, attending their after hours sports and activities, and learning about them as much as possible.
NHTV Student Lauren Kelly said “It’s really cool because you get to know someone outside of your circle, you get to expand your circle, and learn about someone new. Now your circle is more like … an oval!” Scott Melanson, the NHTV teacher said that he’s super excited to see how all the videos turn out and can’t wait to hear all the untold stories of the students.
Throughout the process of this project there were ups, downs, and turn-arounds, but that didn’t stop the students from having a little freedom and a lot of fun.
