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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Pictures of Health

By Laura Nesbitt
Mountain View Telegraph
    Brieann Gillespie is learning how to express something she believes by reaching "out to other people my age" through a video journalism class project.
    Fourteen juniors and seniors from Estancia High School filmed three public service announcements in early December about the deadly aspects of tobacco use.
    The students will find out soon whether they have won a contest sponsored by the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, an outreach project founded in 1993 whose mission is partly to cultivate critical thinking, according to their Web site.

Anti-Smoking PSAs Click to play

Click to play

Click to play

    Brenda Acosta, Line Andersen, Cricket Braman, Zachery Coriz, Mariah Cowan, Randall Crosswhite, Brieann Gillespie, Noel Gonzalez, Martin Gutierrez, Jessica Miller, Timothy Sedillo, Arley Umphries, Emily Weidner and Laura Ziemann spent about two weeks working during class on the 30-second videos.
    The young people say that the advantage of the PSAs is that they might cause someone to stop and consider before they smoke, drink or get high.
    "It might make someone start thinking. They might not smoke," Cowan said.
    "It's a project with a meaning," Andersen said.
    Laci Lockwood, who has taught video journalism, graphic design and world history at the high school for the past two years, said the students produced the three PSAs using tiny digital video Sony Handycams.
    In the first PSA a group of students talk about "the irony" between the perception of cigarette use as a popularity tool and the fact that using tobacco contributes to cancer, Lockwood said.
    The second PSA is about a youth at school who starts smoking and his friends leave him because "he smells bad," Lockwood said.
    "The last scene is that popular kid at the beginning is standing in the middle of the gym and it's completely dark," Lockwood said. " 'Don't be the one left out' is what it says on the screen at the end. That's a pretty vivid image."
    The last PSA uses humor to drive its message home.
    "We made a huge cigarette out of papier maché and chicken wire, and we put it on a kid, and he chased another kid around on the front lawn to the theme song of 'Jaws,' '' Lockwood said.
    At the end of the video the cigarette catches the young person, who has fallen to the ground, and the cigarette throws his arms up in victory.
    "We had to be really creative and we couldn't break the school rules by smoking on campus," Andersen said.
    Whether the 14 young people win apparently does not matter because they are now working on six more PSAs to showcase the effects of drug and alcohol abuse.
    The most difficult part about filming was coming up with an idea— so the young people brainstormed.
    Gillespie is working on a video about methamphetamine and what it does to your body.
    "Each person in the video represents different effects of meth," Cowan said.
    The public will get a chance to see all of the PSAs, which will be screened at the Partnership for a Healthy Torrance County Health Fair tentatively scheduled for March 29 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the county fairgrounds in Estancia.
    Lockwood said she also was involved in securing a $1 million technology bond that provided the Estancia schools with "500 new computers— custom built."
    The money helped with the purchase of high-end projectors called mimeo-wireless devices that "turn the basic whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard," Lockwood said.