Fort Mill High School wins first-ever March Media Madness competition

The Student Reporting Labs program launched its inaugural March Media Madness competition this year, a chance for schools around the nation to get creative, compete against each other and make some fun videos.

The participating schools were:

Fraser High School, Fraser, MI

Lakewood High School, St. Petersburg, Fla.

John Hopkins Middle School, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Austin High School, Austin, Tx.

Woodlawn High School, Birmingham, Ala.

Kennedy High School, Silver Spring, Md.

Fort Mill High School, Fort Mill, S.C.

McGavock High School, Nashville, Tenn.

Granby High School, Norfolk, VA

Desert Pines High School, Las Vegas, NV

Those ten schools kicked off the competition by making short promotional videos for their school or journalism program. The pool of ten was reduced to seven when Fort Mill High School, Austin High School, Lakewood High School, John Hopkins Middle School, Kennedy High School, McGavock High School and Woodlawn High School moved on to the second round. All of the videos were judged on creativity, audio quality and video quality by impartial NewsHour staff members.

In round two, students tackled the best practices of video making by filming short tutorials about lighting, sound and shooting footage. Kennedy High School, Fort Mill High School and John Hopkins Middle School emerged the winners of that round, guaranteeing each of their classes a pizza party.

The three finalists each made a public service announcement about why it’s important to stay in school. Fort Mill High School in South Carolina emerged the overall winner with a creative submission featuring ‘frozen’ film techniques. All participating schools received an official Student Reporting Labs t-shirt, and the grand prize winner received up to 300 dollars of video equipment for their school.

At long last, the results of the first-ever March Media Madness competition are in! Watch the special broadcast below to find out who won.

Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas, Nevada won the social media portion of the competition by furiously sharing their work and creative process on reportinglabs.tumblr.com. They received an ice cream party for those social media contributions

You can view all of the March Media Madness submissions on the interactive map below.

View March Media Madness! in a larger map