Competing at STN has been a great experience in these past three years that I have been in media. It is both fun and hard work combined into one event. This year, I competed in Sweet 16 Broadcast and Spot Feature. These are both very difficult and I can tell you that it is not easy. To give my wisdom to next year's students I would say that teamwork is crucial, staying on task, and motivation is what will help you to succeed at STN.
Teamwork is very important for all categories. If your team does not work well together, you will not be able to produce a good video. It is important that everyone on your team cooperates, everybody needs to have a say on things. Everybody's opinion matters, who knows? Somebody's thought about something could make something even better than it already is! Without teamwork, your team will fall apart. I know from the past that no teamwork kicks you in the butt at STN.
Staying on task is also very important while competing at STN! At STN, time is very tight and every second counts. During Sweet 16, I pushed the teams to finish their separate videos by 6 PM. But all teams failed to finish their videos on time and ended up finishing them about an hour later. That pushed our early deadline back by an hour which makes it hard. So it's important to stay on task, for me it makes it easy to make a schedule and aim for a time to finish things. Besides your given deadlines like 2 hours film and 3 hours edit, aim for other deadlines. For example, during Spot Feature we would give ourselves half an hour to find a person to interview. While Kaden and Brandon were filming broll I would start writing the script and give myself half an hour to do voice overs and film stand ups. And during editing, we would export what we have about an hour earlier than the actual deadline.
Motivation is another big factor to succeeding at STN (and anywhere else). I learned about motivation from Cameron Quan, STN's student of the year. Motivation is what is going to push you to strive toward your deadline. My motivation last year was to place because we didn't the year before that. This year, my motivation was to do even better than last year because it was my last time competing at STN with CKTV. If you don't have motivation, you have nothing to work towards. And there is no greater feeling in the world than accomplishing your goal. Motivation will help you reach your goals and succeed.
In conclusion, teamwork, staying on task, and motivation is what will help you at STN. Take it from me, you need these things to succeed. With these things it will give you a smoother ride through your competition. I hope my advice was helpful and will be token into consideration by future students/competitors.
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