Bethel Park student wins video contest by issuing ‘Rubber Band Challenge’
Harry Funk / Staff Noah Gearhart issues "The Rubber Band Challenge."
Harry Funk / Staff Noah Gearhart issues "The Rubber Band Challenge."
While he enjoys making videos for fun, Noah Gearhart also makes them for a cause.
“One of the things I see all the time, especially with bullying and disrespect, is kids swearing at each other,” the Bethel Park High School student said. “So I thought it would be a good film topic.”
The folks at the South Side-based Steeltown Entertainment Project concurred. “The Rubber Band Challenge,” Noah’s five-minute entry in the nonprofit organization’s annual Take a Shot at Changing the World Contest, won him first place in the high school documentary division, with a $1,500 prize.
“Wear a rubber band on your wrist,” he explains in the video. “Every time you swear, snap yourself with it.”
To lay the groundwork for the challenge, Noah poses the question: “Why do kids swear?”
Fellow students in his video production class provide some perspective, as do their teacher, Brad “Mr. K” Kszastowski, and principal, Zeb Jansante.
“I definitely say thanks to ‘Dr. J’ for letting me interview him,” Noah said. “I got him at a bad time. He had to leave right after I interviewed him to drive somewhere an hour away. I think that made the film, him being in it.”
Noah’s interest in filming dates back to his grade-school days, when he and other relatives would participate in videos made by his cousin Hannah Kovscek, a Brownsville native who these days is an officer on the University Honors Program Student Advisory Board at California University of Pennsylvania.
He got his own camera when he was in sixth grade and started following suit.
“After I moved to the high school, I saw that we had a great video program there, we had great equipment, and I realized how much I enjoy it, Noah said. He upgraded to a Canon the summer after his freshman year, “and I’ve been making videos ever since.”
Most of them are school-related, running regularly on Bethel Park’s student-run BlackHawk TV, both on the air and at www.youtube.com/user/BPHSBlackHawkTV. His favorite is his chronicle of the April trip to Chicago by the high school music department, for which he plays trombone in the symphonic band and jazz ensemble.
Noah’s mother, Andrea, tipped him off about the Steeltown Entertainment Project contest after hearing about it at Peters Township High School, where she is a chemistry teacher.
“We were so proud of our son with the topic that he chose,” she said, referencing her husband, David. About Noah’s video prowess: “I think the last two years, his talent has just deepened, his eye for editing and positing of the camera, and his creativity at being able to summarize a message and really communicate it clearly.”
Just as cousin Hannah inspired Noah, he has done so with his sister, Sarah, a video enthusiast who is going to be a freshman at Bethel Park High School.
As for Noah, who is going to be a junior and will serve as BlackHawk TV president, he is contemplating a career path in computer programming.
“I actually wrote a program for the school to put Tweets from Twitter on all the TVs, and I have a big passion for programming,” he said. “But I don’t get to program as much as I get to make videos.”
In the meantime, he hopes his anti-cursing campaign gains some traction.
“Many of my friends, they would love to be in the video, but to actually commit and do it, they don’t find the motivation enough. I definitely will encourage them to. I think it would be great for them to,” he said about “The Rubber Band Challenge,” which can be viewed at youtu.be/OsNJbyCttbM.