Two students from Fort Vancouver High School won a gold medal in the video product development contest at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference on June 25.
Senior Jesse Chiem and junior Nathan O’Meara bested other high school teams from around the country with a seven-minute video they produced to promote Fort Vancouver’s career and technical education programs. They also put together two storyboards for commercials to promote their video, took a test on general video production knowledge and interviewed with the judges.
This was the first gold medal at the national event for Chiem, who competed and qualified for the national event in Kansas City, Mo. the past three years.
“This video in particular was my favorite, because it was something we paid attention to and wasn’t a side project,” Chiem said.
This was the first time competing for O’Meara.
“Jesse has been doing this for a while. He needed a partner this year and asked me if I was interested,” O’Meara said. “He seemed to know what he was doing. I was happy to add my own things and to help him get a gold on his last try.”
The two were both in SkillsUSA adviser Andy Berhow’s video production class at Fort. Chiem and O’Meara mostly worked on the project after school but arranged to use some class time to shoot and edit video, he said. They wrote a working script, filmed classes and then put the pieces together in Adobe Premiere Pro, a video editing program. After the state competition the two added a few special effects, which Chiem said were mostly 3-D movie titles, using Adobe After Effects.
In the fall, Chiem will attend the University of Portland, where he plans to major in communications.
O’Meara has another year at Fort. He plans to compete in SkillsUSA next year and continue to take Berhow’s video production class, but isn’t sure what he’ll do after high school.
Nineteen other students and three advisers from Vancouver Public Schools also attended the conference.
Columbia River students Aisha Woodburn, Alan Grove, Spencer Thomas and Felicia Fitzpatrick won a bronze medal in the broadcast news production competition. The team was only 13 points from the first-place team, according to adviser Janine Blackwell. It had the highest scores in several categories of the competition but took a 10-point deduction for running two seconds over the three-minute time limit, she said.
Several students from Evergreen and Battle Ground public schools also attended the competition, but didn’t place in their competitions.
SkillsUSA serves teachers, high school and college students who are preparing for careers in trade, technical and skilled service occupations.
