Holiday spirit displayed in holiday video contest; winner and runners-up announced
Casper College students and employees are in a holiday state of mind, and nothing shows that better than the holiday video submissions received as part of the first-ever Casper College Holiday Video Contest.
The contest was the brainchild of Casper College President Darren Divine. Shortly after beginning his tenure at the college, Divine charged the public relations department with creating a holiday video. The first was such a success the department has created one each year since.
This year, Divine thought it would be fun for the 2023 holiday season to give employees and students the opportunity to develop the college’s official holiday video for 2023. PR Director Chris Lorenzen fully embraced the idea. In the official announcement, Lorenzen wrote: “This year, we are giving you the opportunity to come up with the official college holiday video for 2023 because we believe you can do a better job at bringing out the energy, fun, and excitement of the holidays on campus.”
According to Lorenzen, polished and perfect videos were not sought; instead, videos that displayed the team’s… “creativity, originality, and authenticity.” The theme for the video was “It’s a holiday video on the Casper College campus.”
Six total teams on campus submitted a video. All six showed not only creativity but contained a large amount of energy, excitement and holiday fun! A panel of judges was asked to select the winning entry, which proved to be a difficult task. Prizes were awarded for the top entries, including a hosted party for first place.
The winning video came from the Casper College Forensics team. The five runners-up are also worth more than just a mention, so you’ll find links to all six videos embedded within this story!
Winner: The Casper College Forensics team
The idea for the winning video was a group effort. “We started with the idea of doing a mockumentary style video with interview cutaways like in ‘The Office,’ said Ethan Fife, communications instructor and assistant forensics team coach. Because they weren’t sure if their first idea would fit the short-form video requirement, they switched gears and … “came up with a faster-paced idea of the coaches barking orders at the team, at least keeping the idea of everyone reacting to a silly authority figure,” Fife said. After Fife quickly wrote a script, the video was done in one class period, and then team member Davin Ro put the video together. Participants in the video are Fife, Eva Stone, Pearl Taylor, Nina Bivens, Kambrie White, Sienna Gomez, Tyler Cooper, Cass Baedke, Dani Schulz, Ro, Jack Cochran, Ella Cassity, and Josie House.
The five runners-up are listed in alphabetical order.
Casper College Enrollment Services participants included Tori Misak, Heather Owens, Dannielle Anderson, Kenzie Miller, Phil Young, Andee Wilcox, Mary O’Connor, Jeremy McKinley, and Ashley Bergeron. The idea for this group’s video was thanks to Misak. “I had asked Heather (Owens) if she thought people would like to do a hip-hop-type flash mob. She said ‘yes,’ so I emailed a couple of different teams for anyone interested! Misak created the choreography, but with tight schedules, the group did something different. With a few 30-minute practice sessions “here and there,” the energetic presentation was filmed three times, and the best takes were spliced together for the final result.
The Casper College Fire Crew Club participants are Cassandra Crossen, Kaleb Huxtable, Reagan Camp, Kaden Smith, Treydon Ward, Kason Loomis, Isa Bramble, Kyler Syverson, Mia Reynolds, Simeon Lambrecht, Andrew Hoyt, Dominic Grey, Ashton Nash, Justin Kleemeyer, and Monte Downare. Fire Science Director Justin Smith mentioned to the Fire Crew Club students that poems were on the internet and that one of them could serve as the basis for a video. “The students liked the idea, and we began discussing that Old Fire Station #2, our fire engine, and the students in turnout gear would be excellent assets to making the video,” said Smith. The students met to discuss and plan for the video. The students met at the station for about four hours, and the editing was completed the next day by Andrew Hoyt, who took on the role of cinematographer and editor. “I am very proud of their individual and group efforts. They are a great group,” said Smith.
The Casper College Foundation and Alumni Association participants are Rachel Macy, Ann Dalton, Denise Bressler, Katie Schwieger, Kari Hawthorne, and Becky Wise. “Rachel came up with the idea, and Rachel and I worked about two weeks, give or take, on the video, a few minutes here and there, not a solid two weeks,” Dalton noted.
The Casper College Residence Hall participants included Devin Fulton, Corey Peacock, Megan Schafer, Liz Dobson, Jenna Palinek, Amy Mackay, Alex Glover, Carlito Gonzales, Jayden Carrier, Travis Scribner, Dash Lloyd, Taylor Dye, Jayden Gremm, Eva Stone, Julia Alexander, Sophia Zettl, and Kelsey Anderson. Fulton and Dobson came up with the idea, and filming took place between November 2 and December 2. “We probably spent about eight hours total getting everything ready to submit,” said Dobson.
The final video is from Casper College Spanish Class students taught by Eric Atkins. Participants included The participants are: Atkins, Stephanie Barella, Curtis Winfrey, Ilisah Covey, Maxwell von Gunten, Kaitlynn McKinsey, Sugar Bond, Suzee Sanford, Marcelle Watts, John Watts, Sophia True, Wyatt Jones, and Ethan Romango. “When (my third-semester class) heard about the video contest, they wanted to participate,” said Atkins. According to Atkins, the class had just finished a novel in Spanish about the Spanish Civil War. The fictitious tale reminded us a bit of ‘The Sound of Music,’ so we thought that the song, ‘My Favorite Things’ went well with the end-of-semester rollercoaster, i.e., all the good and bad that go with being a student at term’s end,” Atkins noted A few level-one students also participated. Atkins the group spent approximately 1.5 hours on the project. The Spanish lyrics were written in about 30 minutes, and so the song rhymes in Spanish but not in the English translation. Atkins filmed each student on a video editing app he found, the group added subtitles and finally edited the video. “We had a lot of fun with the process and premiered the video on the last day of class.” Said Atkins.