Since Aug. 15 students from teacher Matt Stroup’s Cinematography 5-6 class had been working hard to create a video for the 9th annual State of the Schools Breakfast, which took place at Edison Elementary on Oct. 3.

The video was made to thank and encourage companies and business executives from Disney, Pacific BMW, Woodbury University, AT&T, among others. According to Stroup, the intention of the video was to show that teachers and staff are providing the best education for students as possible.

This year was the first year that Stroup had his cinema students make the video. In past years, professionals filmed and edited the video. Stroup said that he was very impressed with the outcome. “I’m very, very proud and very, very happy with the work put into it and what they learned from it,” Stroup said.

Each location, each school had its own unique story, and the goal was to tell those stories and give it a voice in an eight to ten minute video. Stroup and his cinema students edit over 15 hours of footage to find the right shots.

According to Stroup, for every hour of film, they only used about 30 seconds to a minute in the final product. The end result was a nine and a half minute story on how kids start in elementary learning science and technology and how that can branch off to robotics, business, art and media.

All the music and animation in the video was original, except for one song.

Most of the filming was done after school at various GUSD locations. Senior Alejandro Espinosa did some filming at Daily High School and edited content from Rosemont and Daily, along with a Clark alumni sequence. Senior Chris Kramer helped edit together Lego robotics programs for Rosemont and Roosevelt Middle Schools.

“The opportunity to work on something of this magnitude was amazing,” said senior Armand Tatavosian. He, Espinosa and Kramer all went to the breakfast. Kramer said that the people who saw the video were impressed that it was created by students. They all agreed that it turned out to be an amazing video.

“This project means a lot to our school,” Stroup said. “It really shows the value of Clark.”