Broadcast students traveled to Drury University in Springfield, Missouri for a two-day regional conference and competition named VidCom, Friday, Nov. 4 and Saturday, Nov. 5. The team placed second in the commercial round and third in the spot feature round.

For students, this was an opportunity to improve their ability to create short films and other types of videos as well as compete against other Kansas and Missouri high schools with their creations.

Sophomore Carly Tribble, along with many others, competed Friday night in a competition entitled “Midnight Madness.” For this, students were asked to create a short film in five hours, using a specific prompt, a number of props and a line of dialogue given to them by judges.

“Midnight madness was definitely hard,” Tribble said. “It was super late at night so we didn’t have good lighting and the deadlines were short and fast for us to meet.”

Senior Elaina Bartlow agrees that short deadlines added a unique, difficult challenge to the competition.

“[The midnight madness deadline] was something different for everyone here,” Bartlow said. “We usually get weeks for our stories, you know, to make short films like that here, but we only got five hours.”

Although Bartlow was stressed at times about completing her product,  she enjoyed herself greatly at the competition.

“My favorite event was Midnight Madness as well,” Bartlow said. “I think our video turned out really well … and it was so much fun working with all of the people.”

After having now experienced such an obstacle as a short time frame during a project, Tribble now has a newfound admiration for those that create films for a living.

“I gained a lot of respect for people that can do this really quickly,” Tribble said. “It was certainly such a hard thing for me to do.”

Although Bartlow had doubts when being pushed for time, she said she couldn’t be happier with how the students performed.

“To be able to see our project after five hours of stressful work was really cool,” Bartlow said. “I thought ‘dang, this is pretty good.’ I was so proud of us, I think we did a really, really good job.”