From the funny skits to whacky videos, The Cats Eye announcement show always has something to grab your attention early in the morning.  

As many of viewers may have noticed, our fellow Bobcats have created and starred in a few of the videos that introduce the announcements. But this begs the question, where do these videos come from? How can other students get involved? 

The answer to these questions is quite simple, the student created videos are made in the Principles of Art, Media, and Communications class, which is a new class that was introduced to BAHS in the 2021-2022 school year. The newly introduced class is the beginning class of a new pathway that helps students learn skills to enter the field of Communications as it is a rapidly growing industry in the age of Social Media. 

The starting class allows students to create animations, videos, and voice overs to learn to create and edit different media. Students also learn how to edit these different forms of media by using video cuts, putting videos together, utilizing different filters and adding special effects to their media. The class allows students to go through different units that teach them different skills in these aspects of the field of Communication. Ultimately, these units end in a project where students either group up or work alone in order to demonstrate the skills that they have learned throughout the unit. This is how the videos for the announcements are created. 

Mr. Kyle Benfield is the teacher of this new class, and allows his class to create media to use before the announcements to show off the skills that his class has learned as he leads the announcements in the morning, so he includes the best of his students’ creations in the beginning of the announcements. He allows his class to be fun while also teaching students useful skills in the class. The students get to let their creativity flow while they can incorporate almost whatever they want into their skits, animations and designs as long as it is school appropriate, on top of that he ensures that they are demonstrating their skills properly by utilizing what they have learned in their creations. For example, when making a skit students must use certain camera shots that they have learned about in class. Like projects in other classes, students must meet certain criteria, but in Principles of Art, Media, and Communication students are allowed to be creative and have a lot of fun while making content. 

When asked about the focus of the class, Mr. Benfield responded, “So, with The Principles of Art, Media, and Communication or IM we kinda try to focus on everything, its important, obviously, to understand the basic fundamentals of videography, things like shot types, being able to go ahead and utilize certain equipment…”. He also noted, “You also have to obviously discuss and, in that case, teach some of the modern ways that content delivery actually happens for us.” 

Principles of Art, Media, and Communication is a perfect class for students who want to enter the field of Communication, learn to create different forms of content, and even those who just want to have fun and learn skills that you wouldn’t learn otherwise. Course selection for underclassmen will take place beginning February 27.