Mass communication students produce winning Homecoming video for website

Four mass communication students composed a video for the University to promote last week’s homecoming activities, receiving the honor by beating out several other teams also competing to have a winning video.

Lauren Guerriero, Devin Jones, Brandon Craven and Adrianna Fitzwater were on the winning team.

They were part of mass communication professor John Rodriguez’s video production class. The class was broken into teams. Judges viewed each team’s video and selected the winner. The video was put on the University’s website.

“I want my students to get involved in the university and gain practical experience,” said Rodriguez, who was approached by the University to see if he had students who could make the video.

The students were provided with stock footage and a few guidelines to follow, but the winning group said they used a lot of their own footage in the video.

“We wanted to tell a story, not just show random shots, of what would happen if you went to a game,” said Guerriero.

She said the video transitions from people preparing for the game, then shots of the game and a celebration after winning.

A final shot shows the iconic university library against an afternoon sky while the homecoming logo fills the screen.

Guerriero said she was excited to win because so much hard work went into the video.

“I left the hospital from my niece’s birth to come to campus and work on it. We spent all of fall break putting it together,” Guerriero said.

Jones said she was “shocked” at winning because a lot of the footage they shot was lost due to mechanical errors.

Still, they were able to salvage enough to compose the winning video.

“I thought we had a decent chance at winning even with the problems,” Jones said. “We really encompassed the homecoming theme.”