Coronado Video Production Earns Silver at SkillsUSA

Skilled Screenplay//Competing this past month, students of Coronado’s video production team participated in SkillsUSA, a conference that holds competition of workforce based skills. After perfecting their filmmaking and editing skills, Evan Paszek and Hunter Hunsucker competed in the digital cinema event to win silver! (Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons)

On April 7-10th students of Coronado’s video production class traveled to Reno to compete at the SkillsUSA Nevada State Leadership and Skills Conference. SkillsUSA is a nationwide nonprofit organization that holds competitions of various events with a goal of building a skilled workforce for America. Coronado’s had teams competing in video production, broadcasting, and digital cinema. The digital cinema team of seniors Evan Paszek and Hunter Hunsucker placed second in the state.

“To prepare leading up to the conference we watched videos of previous gold medalists of the state and country to see what they do,” Evan Paszek said. “We also looked at our submission from last year and saw where it was flawed and could have been improved.”

Evan and Hunter had two weeks leading up to the state competition to prepare after they had been given the prompt. They spent this time casting, preproducing, filming, and editing so that they could submit their best work.

“Our prompt was that the narrator slowly reveals something. We felt like a lot of people would focus on films about murder, cheating, or something extravagant like that,” Hunsucker said 12, Hunter Hunsucker. “We wanted to approach it in a more simplistic way, so we made a film that was more metaphoric about a photographer's lens cap.”

This competition required Evan and Hunter to perfect their skills helping them to succeed with a second place finish. They had to be comfortable with working with cameras, and the editing software as well as having all of the technical skills during production.

“Problem solving was a big challenge when we were editing,” Paszek said. “If we ran into a problem we had to figure out how to persevere and get around it.”

Throughout filmmaking the digital cinema team experienced challenges with casting people for their video and getting them to act on their behalf. With a casting crew of 12 people Evan and Hunter used skills of leadership and management to keep production running smoothly.

“Casting a lot of people was challenging but necessary for the quality of our film,”  Hunsucker added. “You just have to make them do what you need them to do without pushing boundaries.”

Although two weeks seems like a long time to create a film, that time slips away quickly. They spent many nights up late filming, and editing in order to make sure it was perfect and submit it on time.

“Sometimes it was 3 or 4 in the morning and already three monsters deep, but we still had to finish the film,” Paszek explained.

During this experience of many highs and lows of the SkillsUSA conference, in the end, Evan and Hunter were able to succeed in their digital cinema film with the help of many actors and perseverance. SkillsUSA provides a way for students to practice their workforce skills, compete, and learn along the way, whether it's in filmmaking, culinary, automotive or any of the other fields offered, there is a place for anyone to succeed. For Paszek and Hunsucker, this provided a way to further develop and apply the skills they continue to prove time after time to be incredibly skilled at.