With the amount of work that TCTV produces, parents, teachers, students, and the rest of the community was bound to notice. Two Chick-Fil-A advertisers, Katie Grimes, and Karen Evans, came to Mr. Janda, and asked if his students could create commercials for the Alliance Town Center Chick-Fil-A location around January of the 2017-18 school year. Janda readily agreed, thinking this would teach his students something that working on TCTV videos couldn’t.
“We’re always trying to do the same kind of work that real professionals would do, so this project helped our students go through the entire process of pitching concepts to a client, working through it- making it actually happen, deliver it on time, and then get feedback from the client.” Janda said.
Many of the students jumped at the chance to participate in this opportunity. The project was a challenge, by trying to create something new and different that went with the theme of what Chick-Fil-A was about.
Alicia Ross, a senior in TCTV, worked with her partner Rylee Cristan, a senior as well, to create one of the videos.
“Rylee and I were inspired by the sense of community the Chick-Fil-A reps told us they wanted to promote at their restaurants.”
These students, including other groups, invested themselves in the project and took it very seriously. Ross said that she felt more pressure this time around to make her video perfect.
“I got a chance to work with some pretty real deadlines. We have deadlines on TCTV, but [they] can be a little more flexible since its for a school production rather than a real-life client. There was a little more pressure to make it perfect than I think we’re used to, but I like working under pressure. I enjoyed the process.” She said.
The groups all had different ideas. One group involving Carlo Martinez, Tim Carrier, Davian Serna and Anthony Rubio created a commercial about the app. Martinez said the whole process went really well for him and his group.
“What worked well was that we all were shooting out ideas and so we really understood each other.”
These projects ultimately taught them how to deal with the real world experiences of making a video like this.
“[Making this video] showed me what doing real projects for companies would feel like and since they, being Chick-Fil-A, really liked it, it can help us out in recommendations.” Said Martinez.
Being high school students, they tend to procrastinate and something else they learned was actually completing projects on time.
Noah Grimes, a junior, had some problems with the group along the way, including some group members that didn’t take the project seriously, which caused them to push back filming. It ended up just being Grimes and Spencer Espino who pulled off the video with very little time to spare. Grimes had some advice for anyone else who might work on projects like this in the future.
“Do not wait to accomplish something [like this until the last minute].”
All the groups strive for perfection and Ross said that she never feels like her work is perfect, but considering the time constraints, she was proud of the work her group did.
“Anytime I work on a project, there is always something I feel I could’ve done better. There have been countless times this year in TCTV alone that I’ve gone back and watched something I filmed and thought…I should’ve used a tripod to get a smoother shot. So yeah, there are things I wish I could’ve done a little differently, but all in all, the project was a success. I’ve got no regrets!”
The main point was to give the students a new experience and learn something from the project, which had a very successful outcome. Tim Carrier really felt like this project helped him learn skills that he will use in the future.
“Every video that I make, I learn something new, whether it be how to direct better, how to shoot differently, how to think outside of the box in terms of resources. I feel like I learned all three when making this video. I am thankful and glad that I have friends who think sort of the way I do, in terms of cinematography and that they understand what I try to say, even though I’m not too skilled in communication. The major thing I learned was how to properly communicate with friends and coworkers and how to be more open to ideas.”
Janda was impressed overall with the outcome of the videos. “I think that a lot of the work that people did, turned out really, really well. Some of these, I think, turned out better than some of the other local commercials from professional people. Some of them I think show not only creativity, but the idea that we pitched something, we had this idea, and made this idea happen. So, I’m really proud of the work that they did.”
Two of the three videos have already been released on the Alliance Town Center Chick-Fil-A Facebook page. The last video will be posted soon.
See all three commercials below:
