Gold

Peer Partner Scuba Event

Neuqua Valley

Feature Story

Entry Description

The scuba event took place in November in Neuqua Valley's pool. All of the peer partners had the opportunity to participate and scuba dive. Peer Partners is a program where a student has the opportunity to work with and help a special needs student in P.E. classes. The peer partners were taught how to scuba dive by an organization called Diveheart. Diveheart is an organization that works with special needs students and teaches them to scuba dive.

Judge 1

Positives: Love the use of the underwater camera to illustrate your story! Nice use of several different interviews to give different points of view. Good blend of editing from above water to underwater.

Improvements: I would have liked to hear you tell more of the story through your own script/track instead of stringing together several long bites. While I liked the fact that you had several interviews, I think the piece would flow better if the bites were shorter and broken up with script in between. I also would have liked to hear from a student, rather than all teachers. What emotion does the student feel participating in this program. Put that back to back with the special needs student - that would make a powerful statement. Nice effort!

Judge 2

Positives: I was very impressed with not only the cause of helping special needs kids but how professionally this was shot and edited. Your use of under water shots worked extremely well and I'm very impressed that you were able to accomplish this. It was needed for the package. I have worked at 2 major TV stations in Chicago and neither one has ever attempted to do what you did with under water camera shots. Very impressive!

Improvements: You should have had some graphic to show where people could volunteer or help out in some way. Perhaps a soundbite from one of the volunteers telling people where they can volunteer their time.

Judge 3

Positives: Very nice piece that was informative, fun to watch and inclusive. The producers were smart enough to get the input from the PE chair, a PE teacher, an officer with DIVEHEART and most importantly from one of the students (Liam) with special needs. Underwater photography is always tough and the videographer(s) did a wonderful job of getting shots to show that off.

Improvements: Joy Pierson's sound seemed a bit off from the other SOTs - possibly the sound bite was not panned to zero? The sound does not seem as full - so if it's only panned to one side - you don't hear the sound from both channels. The opening shot would have been a tad more effective with a graphic over the wide shot - noting the event -