Falcon Vision, the school’s weekly, student-run broadcasting program, received Distinguished Merit in the Broadcast Excellence Award’s Weekly Live News Show category, and crew member Jacob Taylor (11) placed in his convention promotion category at the Student Television Network’s (STN) National Convention in Tampa, Fla. from Feb. 28 to March 3.

The STN convention is one of the largest annual conventions with the Broadcast Excellence being the “most prestigious award for broadcast programs.” Its goal is to support and inspire student filmmakers and broadcasters by providing them with a platform to exhibit their work, compete in competitions and attend workshops taught by industry professionals. Each school’s programs are scored on a percentage scale, and each award — Excellence, Outstanding Achievement and Distinguished Merit — requires a specific percentage cutoff. Judging was based on criteria such as anchor scripting, audio, transitions, graphics and storyline. Falcon Vision first attended the program three years ago, and this was the first time they placed. 

“I was really proud of our team because I feel like we work so hard to try and make our shows better, like every show every year,” Ceili McNichols (11), Falcon Vision crew member, said. “Finally being able to have something that shows how good our show is just makes me really proud.” 

In addition to the Broadcast Excellence Award, Falcon Vision members participated in the Crazy 8’s competitions and general contests in individuals and teams, where they had eight hours to write, create and edit a film in their category. Each film is judged based on a rubric that evaluates factors like their delivery and transitions. Taylor won an honorable mention award in the convention promotion competition that STN uses in the following years as advertisement. 

“Earning an individual award was pretty surprising,” Taylor said. “Participating in one of the most competitive categories, I knew all of the teams would be really good, so I had to give it my all. I’m still in shock that I was able to beat out most of the other schools and get an award.”

For both McNichols and Taylor, it was their second year attending the convention. 

“Last year it was definitely a very new experience,” McNichols said. “It was a lot of fun last year, but I think going this year, I definitely knew a lot more beforehand and I was a lot more experienced, so I was able to produce better films.” 

This year was STN’s largest convention in history, with over 300 schools and 3,500 students attending. 

“We had several other categories,” Falcon Vision adviser Kara Adler said. “I thought a lot of them were going to place, but … they only award the top five, so that is okay. Next year we’ll get them again.”

For individual or team contests, students had a specific amount of time during the second and third convention days to formulate scripts from scratch, gather interviews, record and edit their films. 

“At the convention, I learned the importance of time management,” Taylor said. “Even if it seems like you have a lot of time to do everything, it can go by much faster than you realize. Keeping track of the time and having a schedule makes things much easier. During the individual competitions, time management was also key.”

Furthermore, the convention was an opportunity for staff bonding, since they’re split into two classes.

“The most important lesson was probably just being able to work with people who I don’t know that well, like I didn’t really know everyone who went to the convention,” McNichols said. “So trying to figure out what they’re good at and what they’re not, and just working together was probably the most important thing I learned.”

If students were not competing, some chose to attend the college fair, technology based sessions and informational sessions hosted by companies like Canon and Sony. Other than competitions and classes, opening and closing ceremonies on the first and last day of convention featuring special effects, heightening the energy for the convention. 

“Some of the highlights from the convention were just the little moments we had with our teammates, like playing Uno in the room, talking with everyone and going to dinner together,” McNichols said. “But also the award ceremony was really fun because we got to see everyone’s work and we got to cheer for our teammates.” 

At this year’s convention, STN introduced a new “celebration of student filmmaking” called CineFest, where they showcased student films created at the convention. 

“I really enjoyed meeting new people during the convention,” Taylor said. “Everyone was super friendly, and it was cool to talk with students from all over the country. The convention programs were also super fun. The opening and closing ceremonies had so much energy, but I also really liked CineFest, where we were able to watch some of the student films on the big screen in the Tampa Theater.” 

Although, according to Adler, Falcon Vision’s staff were “upset and frustrated that [they] didn’t get more awards at the convention,” returning with the Excellence Award “speaks volumes to how hard everyone on Falcon Vision works.” 

“Every year, I feel like we’ve really fine tuned our work and gotten better and better, and I think the cool thing about the Excellence Award is [that it represents] not just what one person on staff does,” Adler said. “It’s what everyone on staff does that allows us to win the award … because if they all weren’t working as hard, there’s no way we could have gotten this award … We got this award, which shows more than what we did in a 48 hour period during the competitions at the convention, but it shows what we’ve done over the course of five years to build a really strong program.” 

The students in each category received critiques from judges. According to Adler, with the feedback provided each year, the team’s goal is to “get Silver next year and Gold the year after that.” 

“I think the biggest thing that I really tried to focus on with my students is ‘what do we learn from the convention?’ and ‘how can we use that to improve our show?’” Adler said. “When we got back in class, we talked about all the things that we could have done better and how we can actually implement and improve them in our class, so students and teachers will be seeing several changes to our show, from graphics to our intro and with our packages for how we have reporters speak and stand and talk, so that hopefully next year, not only can we get Silver and Gold, but we can learn from our individual competitions and do better in those moving forward.”