Harbor Springs students showcase work at Lyric with film festival
HARBOR SPRINGS — What started with filming music videos for elementary school students has grown into a comprehensive audio engineering and video editing program at Harbor Springs Public Schools.
After a semester’s worth of work, Harbor Springs’ audio engineering and video editing (AEVE) students will be celebrating this weekend with a trip to the Lyric Theatre for the Harbor Springs AEVE Student Film Festival.
Kicking off at 11 a.m. Jan. 14, students, families, friends and the public will be able to file into the theater to watch the students’ projects.
Jason Byma, AEVE instructor, said getting to watch the students see their projects for the first time on the big screen is one of his favorite parts of the program.
The AEVE program started as an elective in the middle school six years ago. Now, it is also offered as a career technical education course through the high school, and is open to all students within the Char-Em ISD. Right now, the program welcomes a student from Harbor Light, as well one that is homeschooled. They visit the high school just to participate in the AEVE program.
Since the program started, it’s expanded a lot. Middle schoolers have to join a wait list just to participate. There are 33 students involved at the high school level, and 26 involved at the middle school level.
In the courses, students have to do their own video editing and production, but do not necessarily need to act in or be in their own project. In high school, students are able to take the class for as little as one semester, or up to the full four years.
“This is a huge, growing — and it's never going away — field,” Byma said. "The audio and visual fields are never going away.”
He said he wants to bring more attention to the program to let students know they don’t need to be actors or actresses to be in the field and encourages them to keep in mind how many names scroll by at the end of a movie.
While the younger students are a bit more apprehensive to share their work, the veterans in the class get excited to see their work on the big screen.
“One of the most rewarding things is to watch the kids’ reaction when people are watching their work,” Byma said. “There was a particular student last year — and we asked a couple of teachers to come in and check out some things — and when they got done, and he looked around, and he's like, ‘I made that!’”
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Getting to showcase the students' work is something Byma enjoys about the class, and he said he hopes to continue having showcases each semester, whether it’s welcoming families back to the Lyric, or ushering them into the district’s auditorium.
Tickets to Sunday’s film festival can be purchased at lyricharborsprings.org.
— Contact reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Harbor Springs students showcase work at Lyric with film festival
