WROR TV travels to Nashville for competition

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Every year, over 3,000 students travel from all over the United States, gathering on either the west or east coast for the Student Television Network (STN) convention. This year’s event takes place for the WROR TV students in Nashville, Tennessee. WROR TV heads to the event on March 13.

“STN is a national convention where 3,000 kids come from all over the United States, and last year even a few kids from Russia,” said senior Ashlyn Register. “We all are going to Nashville, Tennessee, and we compete in competitions against other schools. They also bring in speakers, like professionals, and they also have a college fair one night so if you want to talk to any of the colleges, you can.”

On Thursday, the group from WROR TV will be participate in contests for which they’ve been practicing since December.

“We do practices for the Crazy 8 contest, which is the first thing we do there,” said TV production teacher Kevin Patterson. “It is an eight-hour contest where they will have eight hours to write, shoot and edit a either broadcast or short film depending on their category.”

This year has given first time attendee Andrea Festejo the chance to go.

“This year it is on the east coast, and last year I wanted to go but it was in Anaheim, which was too far away and it was a little too expensive, so this year it is a lot cheaper and closer and I’ve always wanted to go,” Festejo said.

Register believes these factors have given students the chance to go, creating their biggest group yet.

“This year for the first time, we have two teams, which one team is doing broadcast, and the other team is doing a short film,” Patterson said.

Taking such a big group on a long-distance trip isn’t cheap, so the group also puts in a lot of effort to raise funds.

“The past couple of years we have done these frozen butterbread pastries,” Patterson said. “Right now we are doing bracelets, silver and gold charm bracelets, and Oviedo PopSocket. So far we haven’t had many people get into selling them, but we do those to give everyone a chance to offset their costs.”

According to Patterson, whatever everyone contributes to the fundraiser is the amount that gets taken off of their trip costs. They’ve also started to try alternative methods to raise money.

“We started to do crowdsourcing, and Snap Raise, which a lot of school programs have gotten into,” Patterson said. “Next year we might be doing a GoFundMe or a letter campaign; we are trying to raise money that way so we aren’t just constantly selling stuff, because that can get tiring.”