Submitted by Berry College
ROME — What started out as a video production project featuring garden gnomes has resulted in a national broadcasting award for three Berry College students. The advertisement they produced recently claimed second place in the two-year/small college category at the 2010 Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts.
The commercial was created as a project for Narrative Video Production, a class taught by Curt Hersey in Berry’s Department of Communication. Using stop motion videography, students Amelia Heine, David Reeves and Jenny Mischler were able to make the gnomes in their advertisement appear to move as they help awaken a young woman with a cup of coffee. The script was written by Lindsey Coe, a 2009 Berry communication graduate, for a copywriting and scriptwriting class, also taught by Hersey.
Amelia, a junior communication major, is the daughter of Eric and Kristina Heine of Carrollton, Ga. David, a senior communication major, is the son of Paul and Lori Reeves of Lilburn, Ga. Jenny, a senior communication major, is the daughter of Kevin and Leeanne Mischler of Knoxville, Tenn.
“I'm really proud of all the students involved,” said Hersey, himself a Berry graduate. “From script development to the actual shooting and editing of the ad, these students worked very hard to produce a funny and well-crafted project. Stop motion shooting like this can be tedious and hard to pull off, so I think it’s great that they've received recognition from one of the top organizations in this field.”
The BEA Media Arts Festival is one of the most prestigious contests a communication major can enter. The judges are media professionals and scholars from around the country.
This is the second national award won by Berry College broadcasting students since the beginning of the 2009-10 academic year. Last fall, “The Conference Room,” a comedy produced by Viking Fusion, Berry College’s student-operated multimedia Web site, won Best Comedy in a national contest sponsored by College Broadcasters Inc.
The award-winning commercial can be viewed online by visiting the following link: http://vikingfusion.berry.edu/index.php?cID=508.
