Let’s go to the video tape

For the second year in a row, General Douglas MacArthur High School can claim victory in Nassau County’s Public Service Announcement contest.

The drug awareness contest, sponsored by Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and Bethpage Federal Credit Union, encouraged students to submit videos with an anti-drug message. Several teams from Bill Farney’s digital media class at MacArthur did just that, with one group taking the top prize and earning an invitation last month to the Theodore Roosevelt Executive Building in Mineola, where they were honored.

Seniors Max Cohen, Samantha Marrero, Ashley Simoes and Alex Philbin comprised the winning team. Their 30-second video, “End the Stigma,” includes music but no dialogue. It focuses on four students and shows that anyone, regardless of that status in high school, could have serious problems that could lead to drug abuse, such as anxiety, depression or bi-polar disorder. It ends by providing a phone number to a 24/7 hotline.

“I thought it was an interesting topic,” Marrero said. “It’s not really something you talk about with your peers.”

The video took about two weeks to plan, film and edit. Cohen played the main character, who wears a black hooded sweatshirt to look the part of the person most in need of help. But as each other character turns over a sign showing their high school status, it reveals their underlying problem.

Simoes explained that the purpose of the video was about giving other high school students a voice. “Anyone can relate to it,” she said. “It doesn’t just reach one type of audience.”

Cohen said that working together with his team to get the message out was just as rewarding as winning the competition. “We worked hard on it,” he said. “It was a great experience.”

Marrero did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, and also was the Homecoming queen who suffered from depression. Simoes was the volleyball captain who suffered from bi-polar disorder, and also picked the music for the video.

“I thought it was good,” she said of the finished product, “but I didn’t think we’d get first because it was the first video we ever made.”

Farney said he is very proud of the team, and noted that they “put their hearts into it.” As a teacher, it was rewarding for him to watch the process unfold and seeing their idea transform into a finished product.

He said the substance of the video is what put them over the top. “It’s not just the accomplishment of making a great video technically,” he said. “The message was the most important thing, and we built around it. It was very powerful.”

The video appears on the Levittown School District website on the MacArthur High School page. Valley Stream South High School placed second in the competition, with Levittown’s Division Avenue High School, Baldwin High School and Nassau BOCES earning honorable mentions. According to Mangano, 125 students from 10 high schools participated, and had four topics to choose from.

Farney said after winning last year, he was on the lookout for the contest again. After the receiving their award this year, Mangano’s wife, Linda, came over to the MacArthur students and commended them. Cohen said that he received a compliment afterward from a former sixth-grade teacher at Jonas Salk Middle School.

“It was nice to hear that other people enjoyed how much work we put into it,” Marrero said.

The students, who also work on the morning announcements for the school, said they are glad to have a class like digital media, where they can express themselves through video and learn how to use industry-standard equipment and software.

Their winning video can be see at www.levittownschools.org/macarthur, and then clicking on the link for MacArthur Videos.