Braintree Students Create
Documentary on Local Artists
By Sandy Vondrasek

Media and Communications student Seth Tracy, right, points out aspects of computer editing to Brantree Elementary School videographers. Front to back, they are Dylan Moreau, Kelsey Jacobs, and Madison White. The younger students are editing an interview they did with Braintree composer Gwyneth Walker. (Herald / Bob Eddy)

Braintree has a passel of artists living and working on its back roads, and interviews with 11 of them are featured on a new video that is in its final editing stages.

Created by fourth- and fifth-graders at Braintree Elementary School, the DVD will be available for viewing at Kimball Public Library later this month, according to Braintree fifth-grade teacher Janni Jacobs.

The video—this year’s "Community Connections" project for the students of Jacobs and fourth-grade teacher Larry Burns—got a big production boost from the Media & Communications program at Randolph Technical Career Center.

Over a number of weeks, RTCC media teacher Bill Zucca and his students helped the younger kids to edit their lengthy interviews into finished segments of about 20 minutes.

"We couldn’t have done it without them," Jacobs said of Zucca’s and the tech students’ help.

Every year, Braintree fourth- and fifth-graders get to know their town, and the people in it, thanks to the "Community Connections" project.

According to Jacobs, the project has taken different forms over the years; this was the first time that a video was tackled.

The final product will include interviews with residents working in a variety of media, some of whom make their living as artists and others who pursue their art form as an after-hours avocation.

Among those interviewed were musicians Jim Green and John Lackard, illustrator Barbara Carter, jewelry maker Tammy Aronson, and composer Gwyneth Walker.

Before teams of kids set out with a video-camera, their teachers had them practice interviewing skills.

"We really tried to get the person to tell a story, instead of answering a set of questions," Jacobs explained.

After the interviews, the younger kids each had a session at RTCC, where high school students taught them the basics of editing, using the "Final Cut" computer program.

Media teacher Bill Zucca noted that Vermont’s education standards call for students to be able to shoot and edit videos in elementary school.

That kind of technical ability, he added, "has become almost a basic communication skill, along with writing, reading, and public speaking."

Although not many elementary schools teach these 21^st-century skills, Zucca said, "it’s really pretty easy, at the level they (the Braintree students) did it."

Several of the elementary students "showed great promise in editing—they took over after 20-30 minutes with my kids," he added.

These days, Zucca’s media students are re-focusing full-time energies on completing their final video projects, a number of which were on display at last Wednesday’s open house at RTCC.