IN Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall Summer 2016 | Page 79

Brentwood communications student
came home from Robert Morris University
holding seven Digital Media Arts
Consortium (DMAC) awards. During the
Spring Student Festival, students won
awards in PSA, feature story, special effects,
feature photography, interactive web
design, news article and senior Taryn Sherry
won a Founder’s Award.
DMAC is the former Television Teachers
Consortium (TVT), an organization that has
been part of RMU for 22 years. The recent
name change was the result of the group
add additional digital medias to their spring
festival.
Sandhya Adhikari won Best in Category
for Photography. Adhikari’s photo was of
sophomore Steve Barton in his science class.
“I took a picture, the background was
blurry and the front was focused. Originally,
I took the picture for a photo scavenger
hunt in my Yearbook/ Newspaper class,” said
Adhikari.
Using for the first time the motion
graphics program Adobe After Effects
(purchased with grant money from the Hive
Fund), Zack Horstmann won for a 30 second
animated motion graphic for Flip it Friday.
“It took me about three days working
three to four periods a day to make the

graphic. The hardest part was creating the
ideas, getting everything ready before
I created it and picking the music,” said
Horstmann.
Sierra Powers won an award for
excellence for her Drop the Puck on Cancer
news article. Powers would describe her
project as, “An informational article about
Drop the Puck this year and what Drop
the Puck is about and its impact on the
Brentwood Community. The hardest part of
designing and creating my project was how
emotional of a topic cancer is. It wasn’t what
I was writing that made me emotional but
what I was writing about,” said Powers.
Senior Taryn Sherry won a Founder’s an
award, an award only eligible for seniors
who’ve had an impact on their school’s
digital media arts program.
“Taryn is a huge asset to me and my
classes. I’ve utilized her skills to create
videos for other teachers and the district.
I’ve even asked her to teach an English 10
class a Photoshop lesson. She will be greatly
missed next year,” said Jennifer Hughes
communications teacher.
Sherry also won an award of excellence
for a feature story package she made for
Toys for Tots.

“It’s so nice to be recognized, little
Brentwood beating out so many other
bigger schools,” said Sherry.
In the PSA category, Eric Boehn, Emma
Betz and Brooklyn Grill won for a public
service announcement they created for
teen suicide prevention.
“Our message was simple and straight
forward, but very meaningful which is why
I think we won. It had a great deal of impact
on the viewer,” said Betz.
The final award of excellence was for
interactive web design awarded to Julianna
Winkowski for her work on The Brentwood
Minaret website, thebrentwoodminaret.
com.
“We work hard to create a variety of
digital media for the online newspaper.
We post stories, images and even videos
created by each of the communications
classes. We are currently working on
interactive media timelines to post to the
website,” said Winkowski.
The communications classes are already
gearing up for next year’s competition, a
group of sophomores have already created
a PSA they feel will be competitive at the
festival in 2017.

Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall | Summer 2016 | icmags.com 77

C ISC
T YHOOL
OF MCDI
K ESTRI
E SPCOR
T ENWS
E WS
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By Julianna Winkowski

McKeespor
t
Brentwood
Borough

Brentwood High School Walks Away
Winners at DMAC Student Festival