It is not often that a unique opportunity comes along for teenagers across the nation to showcase their creativity while learning and teaching about financial responsibility, for a chance to win a cash prize in a digital video contest.
This is the opportunity CRHS junior Calvin Heward seized. Calvin recently competed and won state in the American Bankers Association (ABA) sponsored video contest: Lights, Camera, Save!
Calvin’s video is titled “Don’t Rob Your Future.” In the video, the main character is played by Calvin. His character’s future self appears to his present self for a visit. The future version tells the present version that he has ‘robbed’ him because he never saved his money.
Calvin’s message throughout his story is this: save your money.
For the contest, teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 created a video highlighting an aspect of financial responsibility. Whatever the contestants can stir up in their imagination, they can make.
All video submissions are entered into a regional competition. From there, the winners of each regional competition are entered into the state competition. One winner is chosen out of the state competition and entered into the national competition. The top three national winners receive cash prizes.
To determine the national winners, each video is posted on the ABA Instagram account to be voted on by the public. Regional and state winners are determined by judges.
Calvin learned about the competition from a film class he is enrolled in at school. He had to create his video for a class assignment and had the opportunity to then enter it into the competition.
“I did not expect to win state, to be honest. I am a very bad procrastinator, and I procrastinated working on the assignment until the day I was supposed to turn it in,” said Calvin. He almost did not enter his video in the competition.
Calvin’s project required extensive amounts of imagination, creativity, and videography skills.
“I started out with a Google Doc and brainstormed and listed out as many ideas as I could. From there, I tried thinking of different shots that I could have in the video,” Calvin explained, “I made a list of different angles and wrote out the exact things that would happen in the video. From there, I printed it out and followed along with the list, filming everything I needed to from it. Then [I] threw it all into my editor and put all the videos together.”
To give his video a gripping edge, Calvin tried to “think of a story” he could do with it instead of filming it like a regular advertisement.
“Most of what I know about making videos came from messing around with different video editors,” Calvin noted.
Calvin expressed that he did not expect anything to come out of entering the competition, but he “ended up winning state, so that was cool.”
“I just got it in and thought, ‘Yep, that works.’ Then I ended up getting an email a month after I originally submitted it and [it said] congratulations you made it into regionals,” Calvin remarked.
CRHS supported Calvin in the competition by publicizing his accomplishments in school during daily announcements and encouraging students to vote for Calvin’s video in the national competition on Instagram.
When asked how he felt knowing the school was offering its support, Calvin said, “I felt pretty good. Some people thought I died when Mr. Clark came on the intercom and he was talking about me. Fortunately, I didn’t die, and instead, he was just telling people to vote for me.”
The Lights, Camera, Save! Contest happens yearly, so Calvin plans on throwing his hat into the ring again to see if he can do better.
