COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Students are hard at work in College Station ISD, making their visions come alive thanks to a grant from the College Station ISD Education Foundation.
This area nonprofit is responsible for helping fund students with new camera equipment, such as lightning and lenses to create a short film.
“I really enjoyed photography in middle school, that was what my first class was, and then I saw all the other kids in AVP, and it looked really fun,” AVP student Celeste Tomberlin said.
Tomberlin is a senior at College Station High School.
She’s been part of the audio video production (AVP) class all four years.
Her teacher, Stephen Green, collaborated with another teacher at A&M Consolidated High School to receive funding for new equipment to create a short film
“Two big needs that we saw was for some lightning equipment,” Green said. “We had some old, dated stuff, a little bit less customizable, a little less easy to use, but also a little bit less safe in a way just because you had to do a little more training to use them and not burn yourself. They got really hot. The new lighting equipment we’ve got is more modern, more flexible, we can do a lot more with it.”
“It’s a $15,000 grant so it’s really pouring into some good equipment, some really great things the students are learning and something they can take beyond high school to use even professionally,” said Teresa Benden, the Executive Director for the CSISD Education Foundation.
Tomberlin is an actress on set and is enjoying the flexibility of the new lights and lenses.
“They’re really useful because they’re really bright but we can change the color and things like that compared to the lights we had before,” Tomberlin said. “The new lenses have helped our shots look really cool.”
Teresa Benden with the College Station ISD Education Foundation said grants are the biggest project they support throughout the year.
“We had over $325,000 in grants this year that we funded throughout all 19 campuses so the grants themselves are really powerful, and I feel like a really great way for our community to support really innovate learning in our classrooms,” Benden said.
From movie making to documentaries, the AVP students are putting their skills to the test.
“They’ve been putting all this equipment to work throughout the whole year,” Green said. “We’re going to showcase all those projects at our annual film festival events.”
“It’s probably the best part of the year,” Tomberlin said. “I think seeing everyone just be really creative and do what they love.”
You can catch all the students' finished products this May at the film festival events for College Station High School and A&M Consolidated High School.