December is here, meaning the winter holiday is about to begin! Before the winter holiday, on the last day, Glen Rock High School seniors make the winter slideshow in the Media Arts class.
I interviewed Ms. Cella and Ms. Roche on the process for the yearly December slideshow. The December slideshow happens every year when students gather around the auditorium on the Friday before Christmas break to watch a collection of videos put together by the Media Arts classes.
As stated by Ms. Cella, the Holiday Slideshow “evolves in December”. This year the process for filming and getting the video done started a bit later than usual. Seniors only had about one and a half weeks to complete their videos and edit them to condense them down to two minutes, and there is never an apparent theme with the slideshow.
Ms. Cella explained “We don’t start with a theme each year. The theme is it’s a holiday and we’ll still hold the slideshow because originally it was a slideshow-posted video, a holiday slideshow and the idea was for seniors to just kind of entertain school and something fun and festive before we break for the holidays,”
Typically, students taking Media Arts (a senior-only class) have the opportunity to help become a part of the Holiday Slideshow by getting into groups with either their friends, or anyone in the class, and they are given a storyboard to help bring their visions onto the big screen.
“They edit parts and they export them as MP4, and then we look them over, and the administration has an eye on it before showing it to the whole school.”
As Ms. Cella kept explaining the process of how so many clips turn into this one big thing, I pictured myself watching the last two holiday slideshows and just thinking of how good they were, and how creative they were.
Ms. Cella and Ms. Roche typically work on the final product itself, after the students submit their clips to them, but this year, Ben Raser is helping them with this video come together.
“Usually we bring the [clips] to Premiere Pro, and then its taking all the clips just like you would if you were making a video and making sure you’ve got an opening, sometimes it can be used with music,” Ms. Cella explained.
Ultimately, this project is very student-oriented and the video is entirely up to the students. Ms. Roche and Ms. Cella oversee everything with the storyboards and how students are working, but it’s the students who come together to make sure the holiday slideshow is enjoyed on that last Friday before the break.
