“Last year, [senior] Will Cammell and I started doing extra stuff for [FX Teacher Jeff] Manders,” senior Jake Lenderick said, “like extra footage and videos, so he saw we had a passion for video editing and film.”

From this moment, Jake and Will got involved in making one of the most important parts of the Candlelight Ceremony at the end of the year: the senior video.

For all eight years that Manders has been here, the senior video has been an entertaining constant. His role is purely to provide supervision and pick the students who participate in making it. This unique job is one that is very important to the senior class in its final days at FHC.

“There are usually a couple of FX kids that are in an independent study with me,” Manders said, “but I have chosen different ways [to choose students] in the past.”

In years before, when Manders had no independent study, he chose a few senior groups from FX to make it and take turns editing it. In other years, he has done it with only one student working on it. However, this year, Will and Jake were clear choices to make the senior video due to their respective independent studies with Manders.

“Last year, I got to know [graduate] Matt Wilson and [graduate] Kendall Leach pretty well through FHC [because they made the video last year],” Will said. “I always wondered how they were doing it, and they told me they were doing it through an independent study. I thought that was pretty cool.”

Jake and Will have been good friends all throughout high school, so when the opportunity to make the video together arose, they took it. Being good friends makes it easier for them to spend so much time together working on the video.

It would be a big nightmare for the boys if they did not stay on track with editing the video in a structured and organized way, so they attack it systemically, piece-by-piece.

“We divided the video into three sections: fall, winter, and spring,” Jake said. “We just finished the fall sections, so we are starting the winter section now.”

To get the footage they need for the video, Will and Jake use mostly footage taken by the other kids in the FX class. In FX, part of the grade students earn is attained by going to sporting events and getting footage for highlights on the show. All videos taken are put onto the hard drives, so Will and Jake have access to it.

The other footage in the video is taken by Will or Jake, making up about 40% of the video; while a smaller percentage, this part of their job is integral to the success of the video. Some of the filming they do consists of interviewing the seniors.

“When we interview people, we ask them [about] what they are going to miss most about senior year and high school in general,” Jake said. “We also ask what their future plans are.”

The video is made to reflect over the class of 2019’s year, and they strive for students to reminisce on the time had in high school.

“We want to make people laugh and cry with the video, which is hard to do,” Will said. “It has been a great experience working on this video, and we have both learned so much.”

Students and their families can buy the video as a DVD that is included with a digital download. It costs twenty dollars, and that money goes toward covering the price making the DVD and as a fundraiser for equipment. The FX and the Media Communication class runs on a low budget, so the money earned is very helpful. The unique equipment is expensive and gets a lot of use, so things have to be replaced things every year. Jake and Will are proud to contribute to this and bolster the senior class’s memories of their final year.

“There is a lot of pressure that comes along with making the video,” Will said, “but we have high hopes it will turn out well and please everybody.”