Teens in Leilehua video program land paying gigs
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
A picture's worth 1,000 words, and maybe even 100 bucks or so.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
While that payment doesn't quite reach professional scale, it does make students in the Leilehua High School Cinema Tech Academy feel like video professionals. So do the uniforms and the other hallmarks of employment.
Students at Leilehua High School's Cinema Tech Academy are learning and getting hands-on experience in video production. Deena Yoneda, class instructor, shows off one of the videos her class put together. "There are many exciting things in store," for the students, Yoneda said.
"We have them punch timecards, too," said teacher Deena Yoneda, "to try to get it as businesslike as possible."
The students, meanwhile, have got competitive posturing down pat.
"I'm the best," said a grinning senior, Jan-Michael Brinson, a Leilehua Mules football player and three-year Cinema Tech veteran. He had just screened a compilation of his own gridiron clips.
"My stuff is much better," countered Brandon Hiroe, the academy's production manager, who'd been putting finishing touches on a wedding video, one of Cinema Tech's recent commercial jobs.
The 3-year-old program, serving 40 students, is one of four vocational academies on the Leilehua campus that offer both classroom credit and work opportunities. The others hire students out for graphics, culinary and embroidery jobs. (Cinema Tech uniforms were embroidered by their campus work group.)
The money goes toward the academy's equipment, supplies and a bank of Macintosh computers that run iMovie, Avid Cinema and other editing software.
For the past two months, the crew has had a regular paying gig videorecording the monthly meeting of the Mililani Mauka Neighborhood Board. A two-camera crew staffs each two-hour meeting for $100. Sometimes these sessions do go on longer than that, member Melissa Graffigna acknowledged, and then it's the students' option whether or not to continue.
The edited videotapes have begun airing on 'Olelo, the community-broadcast service on Oceanic Cablevision.
Graffigna said the board first asked Mililani Middle School but its video program declined the job.
"We called Leilehua, and they jumped on it," said Graffigna, whose son attends the Wahiawa high school. "They were excited. ... It's working out great."
Among the daily, unpaid duties at Cinema Tech: The students tape the "Mules News," taking turns jazzing up the school bulletin with snippets of music videos at the beginning and end. Sandwiched in the middle is the reading of the bulletin itself, with announcers Gillen Mara and Joe East in one booth, general manager Chanel Wong and her directing crew adjoining, adding graphics and switching back and forth between the two cameras.
"Today's lunch is Wikiwiki Snack..." reads East. Historically, this element of campus news lodges most firmly in the student brain.
The commercial end of the academy calendar is building slowly, partly because Yoneda, in her first year heading the program, was on a learning curve herself. That, she said, is changing.
"We haven't been working on that many different jobs yet, but we are ready to pick up the business," she added.
Inquiries can be e-mailed (cinema@www.leilehua.k12.hi.us) or phoned in (622-6576).
Yoneda said the school is discussing an arrangement to allow the more advanced video students to enroll in classes at Leeward Community College and reap benefits of that campus' program.
"I know that in the near future, we will be offering opportunities for second- and third-year students to do internships at local TV stations," she said. "So there are many exciting things in store."
Cinema Tech has added excitement to the school experience for students like Brinson, who said, "I've never been that book-smart.
"This could be a way to college for me," he said.
