Lights , Camera, Action In Mr. Angove’s Class by Aiden Kehayias and Tyler Ferreira Alves Hill
TV Production at Melbourne High School can feel a lot of pressure. They not only had a new set morning announcements ready every school day, but also had over one thousand students seeing the morning announcements every single day. John Angove, the head and teacher of TV Production, and the students working in TV Production were very aware of that fact. However, Mr Angove has a system in place to divide the workload among his students.
Mr. Angove was the teacher and head of TV Production here at Melbourne High School for about eight years and had a system in place to divide work among the students. “There are three levels of students…” and they “learn in intervals…”, said Mr. Angove. The students studied before and while working, especially in the first level as that was when new students came in and learned the ropes before moving on. While there were three levels for three years of students, there were some rarer exceptions that went for a fourth year, such as Wesley Petersen. He is “...a fourth year, I’m really enjoying it”, said Petersen. He also enforced the idea of the three group system being in place and that the class used “...mostly Adobe products”. Which can be seen as creating a learning curve, but a necessary one for someone to join TV Production.
TV Production had many students working to bring to Mel High the morning announcements every single day. There are about “120 students in the class…” said Mr. Angove. So with 3 major levels of students and the rarer fourth years, the work was divided to limit load and to educate students on multiple different aspects of the TV Production process. This class has brought an opportunity to aspiring writers, photographers, videographers, and producers so that one day they may go on and take what they learned in this class to a potential career.
With fine words said by Mr. Angove and his level 4 student, one might have thought, what have the experiences of the level 3 students been? Well the light on that has been shown by 11th grader Bryson Anderson, and 12th grader, Aniyah St. Fort.
As was mentioned prior, the class’s unique structure based on years of experience within the course, have designated the students to various roles. The morning announcements have been the preface, but there have been other tasks the students had. “It depends on what we’re doing, cause we have a lot of different tasks in here. The morning announcements are split amongst all the different groups, so say we have to do our morning announcements—which my day is wednesday, yesterday… If we don’t have our announcement day, then we might be sitting and trying to get our certifications. Right on, we’re working on adobe acrobat.” said Anderson.
But there is more to the morning announcements than merely recording the main chunk of them. “We do monthly videos; Every month we have to go and do some sort of video. I actually do Teacher’s favorite movie quotes, so I have to go and interview teachers just around the school, ask them what their favorite movie quote, then we put that all in a Premiere project. Angove wants us to do one thing that really stands out, so like something we newly learned… we’ll throw that in the video, and that makes a nice little project we have to do every month.” said Anderson, and “I did a segment called Bulldog Briefs. I ask random questions to students like what their opinions; What’s your favorite food, what’s your favorite music artists—-stuff like that. I record students in the different lunches.” said St. Fort.
With this, there has been a great deal of variety and freedom for student expression and creativity! But the one thing that has stood out time and time again for the students experience, and that is Mr. Angove himself! “Angove really just makes the class super enjoyable. We come in here everyday and he’s just got a fun attitude, and he makes working with the cameras, and the team, a fun time. We can be serious when we really need to crunch down on stuff, but we can also have a lot of fun in this class. It’s a joy to be in this class. I know anyone that’s taken this class more than the first year loves Angove—Everyone loves Angove.” said Anderson, and “Mr. Angove is very nice. He gives us rewards if we pass the exams, and snacks all the time. He’s very chill. I’m glad I did take this class because it’s about editing—video editing—and I think that will help me in the future.” said St. Fort.
With such attestments being said, perhaps it would be best for students to pick Digital design 3, 4, and 5, as their next choice for the coming school year. “Absolutely. If anyone is considering anything to do with photography or videography, or being behind or in front of a camera—I would definitely considering taking the class for a year just to see if it’s something you really want to do. I think if you take this class for a year, especially two years, you’ll know whether or not you can see a career with this class.” recommended Anderson, and “I’d recommend the class. Honestly, the first year is pretty hard especially if you’re not interested in it, but I would still recommend the class because it’s like no other class I’m taking right now. You can apply it to real world stuff if you wanted to edit videos. It could be a little tricky to learn some of this stuff on your own, so it can help you a lot. Like I said, I like the class format. One class you could literally just be walking around the school recording if you wanted to which is really fun. It’s really unique, and the teacher’s really funny.” recommended St. Fort.
Captions: Teaching In TV Production: John Angove, the teacher and head of TV Production, guides and instructs his students on the next steps of and in the class. TV Production was “...one of the harder classes”, said Mr. Angove. So while there was lots of creativity and personal touches in the class, guidance and some amount of lecturing was still required. TV Production worked every day to bring us our morning announcements and we can thank Mr. Angove for directing it. Photo By: Tyler Ferreira Alves Hill
Perfectly Prepared for Presentation: Bryson Anderson getting ready to read out the morning announcements in Mr. Angove’s recording room. With the task of recorded morning announcements divided between various groups of typically 11th graders, those groups had to break down further when assigned the roles of camera management, one who read the announcements, and an editor. “I want to do something whether it’s being a photographer, working with marketing with possibly a social media influencer—so doing marketing, or professional videos like ads. This class is just great for that.” said St. Fort. Photo by Tyler Ferreira Alves Hill.