Taken notice of a commercial on Channel 9 or 7 recently, inviting you to consider an education at St. John Central Academy in Bellaire? If so, then the initial mission is accomplished. Whether you decide to take a tour or not and ponder that education is a topic for another day.
But that is the general aim of the content creators. Upon further inspection, however, it is just how said commercial came to be. While the “stars” of the commercial are all SJCA students, the production crew includes Irish youth as well.
In fact, save for some filming and editing assistance by the folks at WTOV, this is a written and produced SJCA special, a fact that has their broadcast journalism instructor, Jamie Hammond, extremely proud.
“Our broadcasting class was approached by the school’s marketing team, of which I’m the head, but the rest of the team mentioned it would be a really good idea,” Hammond said of the plan’s origination.
“|We started out researching different private school commercials and found one where the layout was nice. We couldn’t copy it, but we did use it as inspiration for the commercial you see now on Channel 9 and 7.
“Our students wrote the script, around five or six different drafts of it, and I just kind of guided them through the process.’
Hammond had a feeling her students would enjoy the project but admitted even she was a little shocked at how quickly they banded together and threw themselves into the commercial, both in preparation and eventual filming.
“They were able to let their creativity and a bit of their personalities into it,” she said. “The way the shots were set up, the script, it was definitely a group effort.
“They knocked it out of the park.”
Multiple Takes
Once the script was finalized, the production class took to setting up multiple locations and filmed multiple students running through the entirety of the script.
That way, there was plenty of footage of different students speaking the script’s entirety at different locations. It could be pieced together later, grabbing the best snippets from each recording.
The portion discussing the school’s E-Sports program, however, came down to one young man; a member of the team. And those were the only lines he ran.
“He was the exception,” Hammond said with a laugh. “He only had the one line, and he got off easy. We have seven kids in the class, and he’s the only guy.”
The broadcast students sent WTOV’s production engineers a copy of the commercial they liked and used as a basis for their own. The news station did the editing and began editing the commercial.
Hammond admitted she got a bit misty-eyed at the end result.
“The commercial has been so well received, and it’s the first one ever for the academy,” she said. “I’m not going to lie; I cried and ran around because I was so excited. I can’t say enough about these kids as they really took to the project and ran with it. The script is also the same script we used for the radio ad.
“They all got in the recording booth and recorded that, and it’s currently in circulation on all the River Radio Network of stations.”
Hammond said the students are now working on a commercial for the school’s website and Facebook pages that they will shoot and edit themselves. They got their feet wet with the first one. It’s time to jump in fully with both feet and handle all aspects of production and editing.
Expanding the Class
Hammond noted that her broadcast students are truly excited each day to come to class.
Soon the students will be handling the morning announcements for the final nine weeks of the school year, with a push to increase their responsibilities for 2022-23. But for now, getting out the info, the morning pledge and prayer, lunch menu, and any other announcements will be their primary responsibilities.
As stated, expansion is soon to follow.
“A lot more students have expressed an interest in signing up, and on top of morning announcements, we plan to do a biweekly news show and keep it focused on things going on at SJCA,” Hammond said. “We are really excited about doing more.”
The class has also worked to live stream some volleyball and basketball games this school year and is looking to expand upon that, with more sports and more frequent streaming.
They even looked into a little play-by-play and color commentary. The problem they ran into was one of knowledge of terminology. In a school the size of St. John, there’s a good chance any of the broadcast class students who know enough about, say volleyball, to do announcing are already on the team and thus, unavailable.
But as interest increases, look for more streaming opportunities, with possible commentary, in the near future.
Not every school in the Ohio Valley offers broadcasting class opportunities, so Hammond knows just how amazing it is that St. John cannot only offer this to its students but also look to continue expanding said opportunities. It should, much like the aim of the commercial, lead to an increase in the school and its offerings.
Only time will tell.
