2010-2011 Winners

Chad Lacy is a freshman at Ironwood Ridge High School, along with his friend and co-filmmaker, Ricky Cordova. Their biology teacher assigned the entire class to create and submit video PSAs in the World of 7 Billion student contest. They choose water because it is relatable, and having grown up in the desert of Arizona, water conservation was taught and discussed from an early age. Chad mentioned learning about population in biology prior to the PSA assignment but hadn’t heard much about it previously.

Chad has written songs and raps for other class projects, so that experience, along with the fact that he and Ricky had played in a band together, led to the decision to do something “musically inclined.” It was a two-day process that began with creating the background beat. Then they researched facts about population and water that would become the basis for their lyrics. The second day was spent shooting the video and while this took up the most time, Chad admits that the most challenging part was “taking all the info we had and condensing it into 30 seconds while still being understandable.”

In his free time, Chad likes to play the guitar, which he’s been doing for three years, as well as play ultimate Frisbee with his school’s club team. As for the future, he’d love to be a professional musician but would also be interested in other music-related fields such as engineering guitars and amps. Chad and Ricky will split the prize money 50/50.