By Alanna Levine — Video Production is a career-tech program that prepares students for various occupational fields such as broadcasting, cinematic film production, corporate communications, advertising, public relations, web-based production, journalism and more.

Their recent project focuses on journalism and journalistic values used in news and broadcasting. The students were required to shoot and edit a two-minute news segment about a subject of their choice and follow journalism requirements while creating their news video.

The students had to conduct research about the topic of their choice; create five interview questions and write out a script; and pay attention to journalistic ethics, story flow, the five news values, and newsworthiness. They would then conduct an on-camera interview, a “reporter” introduction, and a closing.

The seven key points of journalistic ethics include the following: be responsible, be fair, be honest, be accurate, be independent, minimize harm, and be accountable. Characteristics of news that the students were required to use include the story being timely, its proximity, impact, prominence, conflict, audience interest and novelty.

“In video production, we expose the students to every aspect of the video production industry,” video production teacher Joshua Branch said.

They cover industries such as TV commercials, marketing, broadcasting and news.

Gaining a better understanding of each of these industries in video production teaches and trains the students for a variety of career choices and occupations that could be available to them.

“Most of the industries served in video production career tech have overlapping content areas,” Branch said.

The video production students learn skills that can help them learn or improve their interpersonal skills, as well as English skills from writing their own scripts for their news interviews.

“Before project-mode, we covered several days of basic journalistic curriculum to better prepare the students,” Branch said.

During these several days, they went over journalistic values, ethics, story flow and newsworthiness. Students also learned to only insert facts into their news stories and not opinions, a fundamental journalistic principle to be followed that will be necessary for any career opportunity or occupation in a news or journalism field.

Besides film editing, students went over journalistic editing that would follow the typical news formula: intro, interview, commentary, interview, close, etc.

All that the students were required to complete during this project had to be completed within their given time constraint.

This journalism project helps to make them an “all around better student”; and they learned skills and values that they will need to help them make it in high school, throughout their career, and could also benefit them by applying to a subject relevant to high school students lives.

[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]