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Mondays are my long days, today was no different. The one extra-curricular I’m most involved with after-school is Ward Melville TV. When I was a sophomore two years ago at Ward Melville HS, the DVD Yearbook club was formed. We met after school on Mondays and we were solely responsible for producing a companion DVD for our school’s yearbook. Since we began, our club has always been small in size, but we’ve stayed focused on creating quality videos that highlight events from throughout the year and more. Unfortunately, last year we were faced with a harsh reality–sales for the DVD were weak (even at a very low price point) and the yearbook wasn’t going to able to subsidize our costs for much longer.

When I became president of the club in my senior year, I knew we had to do something different to help increase sales. I created a branch of the DVD Yearbook and formed Ward Melville TV, essentially an outlet in which we could air clips from the DVD throughout the school year. My theory is that by letting people know the kind of content that will be on the DVD, they’ll be more inclined to buy it. (ex. How often do you buy a movie ticket without knowing a thing about it?)

We’ll see if that pays off soon. DVD Yearbook sales are beginning this month. The more $5 DVDs we can sell, the better! Today, our club spent nearly two hours filming for a PSA Contest hosted by the Town of Brookhaven. We don’t have much time, as the deadline is two weeks from today and we still have a few more scenes to film but I secretly love working under pressure.

Even if it doesn’t win, this PSA will end up on the DVD Yearbook along with the footage from the Junior Banquet I filmed on Saturday. As I was typing this Kevin, a junior from the club, texted me from the school: “I got the footage from the european handball tournament. I’ll edit a sports overview for it. Slow motion mid air shots are gonna be sick” In addition to increasing sales, my goal this year for the DVD has been to increase content. Our first year we had about 10 videos, last year 15. My goal this year is to have 20+ and we’ve just about hit that goal already.

As for now, I must return to importing Spring Awakening footage and editing a commercial for a friend. The video never ends.