Honorable Mention
2010-2011 Winners
Grades 9-10
Lena de Guzman
Vashon High School, Vashon, WA
For Lena de Guzman, a sophomore at Vashon Island High School, the World of 7 Billion video PSA contest was an assignment in her biology class. But after completing the project for school, Lena, along with her friend and classmate Valentina Duque, decided to go a step further and enter their video into the national contest. They were inspired to learn more about the issues surrounding population after watching a film from National Geographic on world population reaching seven billion. According to Lena, the video inspired her entire class to learn more as well.
Lena and Valentina’s initial research and planning focused on viewing other claymation videos on the internet. They decided to focus on energy because they saw it as a very versatile topic. And while claymation proved to be a good choice, working with the clay and editing the shots turned out to be the most time consuming part of the process. Lena has never entered a video contest before and this was her first experience with both filmmaking and claymation.
When asked what she’d like to do with her prize money, Lena responded, “save it!”