Prizes for the best public service announcements on street safety were awarded to two groups of North students Wednesday, Oct 23, during a luncheon hosted by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation in partnership with Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A).
SS4A is an organization that focuses on building empathy to support a more human-centered transportation system, according to their website. North students have participated in the Safe Streets video contests as part of North’s TV Media class since 2019, with students becoming finalists each year and winning four times.
“People as People,” made by sophomores Sasha Selivan, Ryan Costello, Yossi Danzig, and junior Parker Durken won first place, and “I Give You the Wheel” by sophomores Levi Rosenberg-Van Gameren, Gus Gregg Rodriguez, Cillian Moroney, and juniors John Akgun, Will Hartzog, and Gabe Lobron won second place.
“Me and my group were pretty happy. I was a little surprised with the outcome. But it was a great experience and a pretty fun day,” said Costello.
The competition rules required that the film incorporate the perspective of a person driving and the perspective of a person walking, rolling, or riding a bike.
In first place, “People as People” showed characters running around with wheels in their hands as if they were real cars as they all had different reasons to be in a hurry.
Second place, “I Give You the Wheel,” took viewers back to ancient times when the wheel was first invented, with a group of young men in togas claiming that it would be the creation that would connect all people.
Selivan added, “I feel excited, kind of surprised because we always joked about it, but when it actually happened, there was a feeling like, ‘Yes, we did it.’”
According to Rosenberg-Van Gameren, her team worked for hours outside of school to create the best version of their film.
“I feel like we spent a lot of work on it, and we worked a lot outside of class, and I’m really happy that we got a good outcome from all the work we put into it. We started off with a script that didn’t fit together well with the concept, so we scrapped that and tried to find different ways to create the best idea until it worked,” said Rosenberg-Van Gameren.
Groups started working on their projects at the beginning of the year, leaving students with just under a month to script, record, and edit their movies.
“We structure this competition into our curriculum, so at this point, we are able to meet very tight deadlines at the beginning of the year, which gives us an advantage over other schools,” said TV Media Arts teacher Scott Dunlop. “When students know that they are in a competition, it seems to bring out their best, especially if they can get free food.”
