South H.S. filmmakers take home awards

Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano recognized three students from South High School last week for the anti-drug messages they produced, which took top honors in a countywide contest.

Junior Priscilla Nash and sophomore Sophie Renois tied for second place, and senior Stessy Louis finished third in Nassau County’s Second Annual High School Drug Awareness Public Service Announcement Contest. It was the second year in a row that a student from the school placed in the competition.

“Girl power!” exclaimed Renois at the award ceremony. “It definitely feels good to represent South High School and especially all the girls that go there. Last year, another girl from South came in second, so we’re glad to kind of continue the legacy of Valley Stream South girls bringing home the prizes.”

The girls produced 30-second public service announcements that they learned about from their teacher, Valley Stream Mayor Ed Fare, who uses the contest as a lesson for his video production students.

“I’ve had students work on these PSA’s in both years they’ve had the competition,” he said. “Each of the 29 students in my video class produces a video, and then as a class we work to find 12 which we show to our principal, and then we take the six best and submit them to the contest.”

Each student came up with a concept, wrote a script, found actors, filmed and edited their video, which had to educate the audience about different local resources that can be used to combat drug abuse and addiction in Nassau County.

“The kids learn a lot from this project, because they have to do each part of it themselves,” Fare said. “They’re responsible for every step of the process, from the concept to the execution to the finished project, and I think it’s good to see a project through to its end like that.”

Nash’s commercial featured stop-motion photography, a time-consuming process in which dozens of still photographs are taken and strung together to create an animated, moving scene. She said the project was “very work intensive,” but taught her about the creative process.

“I started by coming up with the idea, writing the script and finding friends that would be willing to appear in it,” she said. “I thought those would be the hardest part, but the editing — combing all those different parts — took a lot of time and a lot of work, but I was really proud of how it finally came out.”

Maureen Henry, principal of South High School, said she was “very glad to be back” at the award ceremony for the second straight year.

“We’re very proud of all of our students who participated in the project,” she said. “These can be very effective at reaching out to kids. No one knows them better than their own peers. They know what will make sense to them. A lot of our students have some great voices and we need to let those voices be heard.”

The girls said they did just that, using stories from their own lives to shape their project’s message. Nash’s video showed drawings of four high school students and asked which was the drug user, before revealing the piece’s message—you can’t tell by looking.

“I saw that ending the stigma is something we can do to help [fight] drug abuse, and it made a lot of sense to me,” she said. “I wanted people to realize that stereotypes aren’t a sign that someone is or isn’t having a problem with drugs.”

Louis’ video showcased a familiar scene for many girls her age, an empty room with a pen and a diary.

“As a girl, I and a lot of my friends spend a lot of time writing in our diary,” she said. “Which can be a great thing. But the diary doesn’t speak back, it can’t give you advice or tell you when something’s a bad idea. It can be so hard to tell someone you’re struggling with something, especially when it has a particularly harsh stigma. I wanted to show people, the best thing to do isn’t to handle these feelings by yourself, but to reach out and ask for help.”