When advanced video production students found out their short film won the grand prize at the Sora School Stars Competition, they were thrilled.
“I was happy that my hard work was noticed and everyone’s efforts were as well,” said senior Jacklyne Gomez, who was one of the directors of the short film. “It was a happy moment for all of us.”
In collaboration with Librarian Alain Cruz, students in the period 1 advanced video production class created a six minute long film parodying “The Office” to promote Sora. Sora is a digital library with a collection of literature, comics and magazines that students have access to via their Chromebooks.
“It was really Mr. Cruz was the inspiration to join the competition,” said Tennessee Norton, the video production teacher who mentored the student filmmakers. “He found out about the contest through other librarians and he presented the idea to us and advanced video production chose to do it as one of their final projects.
The competition held various categories, like student-made submissions, which was what the film competed in. That category included any promotional material for Sora, whether it be a song, video or a presentation.
“It was really all the advanced student class,” Norton said. “They wanted to do something that was a parody, and they chose the office to parody. And then Jackie was like, ‘I have a gorilla costume.’ And once they had the gorilla costume, the rest of it just kind of fell under the place.”
They titled the film “The Library.” The short film follows senior Jesse Medrano playing himself as he warns people of a gorilla going around and replacing the books with iPads. In “The Library,” the cast all play exaggerated versions of themselves. The film then wraps up with Cruz addressing the viewers directly as he advertises the many uses of Sora.
They not only won their category but the grand prize out of the four other category winners. They received $3,000 credit in Sora. With this credit, Norton and Cruz will use it to purchase new books, graphic novels, audio books and comics that students and staff might be interested in. The collection will also be added to the digital library.
“Last year, we had Sora in the district already but I was still kind of new to it and not many students knew about it because I wasn’t really promoting it as much. So I really wanted to find a way to promote Sora,” Cruz said. “I thought to myself, ‘what if the library collaborated with the video program to create something fun, to promote Sora? So I teamed up with them and we also learned that Sora has a competition and we thought what if we did both, promote Sora and maybe submit to the competition as well.”
