By Isabelle Chiu
Online Sports Editor
Mira Costa senior Miriam Sachs gives her poetry a visual dimension in her creation of “A Student Named Art,” a poetry video that she created to advocate for the importance of arts education in high schools across the nation.
Sachs was asked by Get Lit and Words Ignite’s ACTIVATE, two organizations where students use spoken poetry for activism, to make a video for the Students Voices Campaign, a program where students in grades seven to 12 create videos that share their visions for better education. Sachs has been involved with Get Lit for three years, and she became involved with ACTIVATE this past January. Sachs’ vision for her video was to show the importance of arts educations in schools, she said. Currently, the video is on YouTube and Vimeo with over 250 and 5,000 views, respectively.
“I want people to take out from the video that art is really important because it can make people happy, and it shouldn’t be overlooked,” Sachs said. “I personally think our school [Costa] has done a pretty good job with the arts programs, but other schools are not so lucky.”
In Sachs’ video, “A Student Named Art,” a girl named Art, portrayed by X, spreads paint onto every student in the classroom while a voice over by Sachs reads the original poem played in the background. Sachs syncs the poem to the spread of art across the students’ arms, faces and their white t-shirts. Sachs initially had the idea of personifying art, and from there she and two other members of Get Lit, Caitlyn Bode and Mila Cuda, wrote the poem with a plan for the video in mind.
“We wanted the vision of the film to be about why arts needs to be in schools, especially in inner city schools, and we’re brainstorming ways to do that,” Sachs said. “Since Mila, Caitlyn and I were familiar with poetry, we decided to collaborate on a poem.”
Senior Paul O’Mara did the cinematography and played the original background guitar music for “A Student Named Art.” He and Sachs both worked on the story board for the video a few days before filming and edited the video after filming.
“It was a big production,” O’Mara said. “In the beginning, I didn’t know if it was going to work out, but then we edited it, and we thought that it was going to look great.”
The video was filmed in Costa English teacher Diana Sieker’s classroom. Sachs sent out emails and invited her friends from Costa and Get Lit to participate in the video. Filming took place on March 29, and the video was officially posted to Sachs’ Vimeo account on March 30.
“Filming was difficult because every single stop is a picture, so everyone would paint something then step back for a little bit, step back, then take another picture since it’s a slow practice,” O’Mara said.
Nearly everyone who participated in the video assisted with painting and moving equipment around. Sachs says that the collaborative energy behind the film contributed to the video’s success.
“Everyone did everything, not one person just had one single role,” Sachs said. “It wasn’t all me, and it took a lot of people to make it happen, which produced amazing results.”
Sachs’ video was submitted to the Student Voices Summit & Screening Film Festival, which is hosted by the California Alliance for Arts Education, in which it won first place for the 2016 Student Voices Campaign. Sachs will be traveling to the festival in the San Francisco Art Institute on Saturday to collect her award.
“I’m personally really proud of the video, and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve worked on,” Sachs said.
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