StudentCam | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary filmmaking competition |
Frequency | Annual |
Location(s) | United States, Guam |
Years active | 2006-present |
Participants | Middle school students (grades 6-8) High school students (grades 9-12) |
Patron(s) | C-SPAN |
Website | StudentCam.org |
StudentCam is an annual competition selecting the best video documentaries created by middle and high school students. Each year, StudentCam releases a different prompt about the United States for student filmmakers to respond to in a documentary. It is sponsored by the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network's (C-SPAN) Classroom project. [1] All winning documentaries are available to watch on the StudentCam website. The top 25 winners are interviewed for television broadcasts and have their documentaries aired on C-SPAN. [2]
The aim of the competition, as stated by C-SPAN, is to provide an opportunity for young people to voice their opinions on current events. [3] Middle and high school students can compete alone or in groups of up to three, entering a video documentary between 5 and 6 minutes in length, which presents more than one side to the selected topic and includes related C-SPAN programming. [1] Each year a new theme related to current affairs is provided, and competitors must use this as the basis for their entry. [4] Subjects have ranged from video game violence to illegal immigration. [2]
The deadline for entries is in January each year [5] and the StudentCam winners are announced live on C-SPAN's Washington Journal , usually in March each year. [6] Following the announcement, the top 25 entries are shown on C-SPAN, [7] one documentary each weekday morning, accompanied by a telephone interview with the student filmmakers. [2] All of the winning documentaries are available on the StudentCam website. [2] The winning filmmakers receive cash prizes typically totaling $150,000, with the grand prize-winner receiving $5,000, in addition to being featured on C-SPAN. As of 2014 [update] , 150 entries each year are chosen as prize-winners, and 11 teacher awards are given to teachers who incorporate the competition into their classes. [6]
The sponsor of the StudentCam competition is C-SPAN Classroom, a free membership organization providing teachers with C-SPAN materials for classes and research. [6] Promotion of the competition is often supplemented by local cable providers. [8]
The StudentCam competition developed from a documentary competition called CampaignCam, run by C-SPAN during the 2004 presidential campaign as a way of including students' views about the election. The StudentCam forerunner won a Beacon Award in 2005, conferred by the cable industry for excellence in communications and public affairs. [9]
In 2006, StudentCam was launched by C-SPAN, adding a requirement that students include relevant C-SPAN programming. [1] The 2018 competition received the most entries to date, when over 5,700 students from 46 states and Washington, D.C. submitted a total of 2,985 submissions. [10] The grand prize winner of the 2009 competition, Sawyer Bowman, a 10th grade student from Davidson, North Carolina was congratulated by President Barack Obama via a specially-recorded video message. [3] A first-prize winner in the 2010 competition, Matthew Shimura, met First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House in April 2010 during a town hall meeting for her "Let's Move!" initiative, to talk about fighting childhood obesity, which was the subject of Matthew's video. [11]
Year | Students | Film title |
---|---|---|
2006 | Anthony Hernandez and Dustin Gillard | Anywhere USA [2] [7] |
2007 | Zach Chastain, Bryan Cink and Ryan Kelly | Jupiter or Bust: The El Sol Solution [12] |
2008 | Scott Mitchell and Nick Poss | Leaving Religion at the Door [13] |
2009 | Sawyer Bowman | Cancer. It's Personal [3] |
2010 | Madison Richards, Samantha Noll and Lauren Nixon | I've Got the Power [14] |
2011 | Carl Colglazier | The Great Compromise [15] |
2012 | Matthew Shimura | The Constitution and the Camps: Due Process and the Japanese-American Internment' [16] |
2013 | Josh Stokes | Unemployment in America [17] |
2014 | Emma Larson, Michaela Capps, and Sarah Highducheck | Earth First, Fracking Second [18] |
2015 | Anna Gilligan, Katie Demos and Michael Lozovoy | The Artificial Wage [19] |
2016 | Olivia Hurd | Up to Our Necks [20] |
2017 | Ava and Mia Lazar | The Tempest-Tossed [21] |
2018 | Adam Koch and Tyler Cooney | Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote [22] |
2019 | Mason Daugherty and Eli Scott | What It Means to Be an American: Citizen Accountability in Government [10] |
2020 | Jason Lin, Sara Yen and Amar Karoshi | Cmd-delete: Technology’s Damaging Effect on Democracy in 2020 [23] |
2021 | Theodore Poulin | Trust Fall [24] |
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