Shauna McKnight | Arts & Life Co-Editor
On Friday, Nov. 30, Buena Vista University’s (BVU) Digital Media Department is hosting its first annual SHOWOFF Student Media Festival. The competition is for area high school students who have entered their work to compete for trophies and $2,000 scholarships from the university. There were 18 submissions, in four categories: Static photography, slideshow photography, original audio, and original video. The submissions will be shown in the SHOWOFF Student Media Festival Ceremonies at 12:45 p.m. in the BVU Art Gallery located in the Social Science and Arts building. The ceremony is open to the public.
BVU is hosting the event in order to gain community exposure to the digital media major, which was created last year to replace the communication studies major. It is being used as a way to get prospective students interested in and aware of the digital media program here at BVU.
The all-day event will include workshops with digital media professors. The topics include digital journalism, social media, radio, and television. The students will also receive a tour before the closing ceremony where awards will be presented.
Students from the Media Project class organized the event from its inception. Senior media studies major Clair Lynn has been working on the project since last spring.
In order to improve the event for the future, ideas to collaborate with the BVU Art Department and the TLTC, both who have creativity contests within their own department, were suggested. No official decisions have been made.
“We need to get our name out there so people know they can enter, and know the perks of entering. We had to work really hard to get everything we did,” Lynn said.
Lynn feels that she learned a lot from this experience.
“So far, the most rewarding part has been seeing the whole thing come together, even though we haven’t had the actual day yet and that’s going to be pretty stressful,” Lynn said. “But, being the one that’s seen it from day one and seeing this go from information on a piece of paper to this event is crazy.”
