South Fayette students capture pair of first-place finishes with videos
In rapid succession, the visuals shift from a tow truck to an ambulance to a police station to a funeral home.
Accompanying each image is a teenager announcing:
“I don’t want to total my car.”
“I don’t want to end up in the hospital.”
“I don’t want to end up in jail.”
“I don’t want to bury my best friend.”
And on a residential cul-de-sac, where children are playing:
“I don’t want to hurt or kill somebody because I couldn’t bother to pay attention while I was driving.”
The net result is that in all of 30 seconds, a video produced by a group of South Fayette Township High School students sends a crystal-clear message about the dangers of operating a motor vehicle while distracted.
As a result, “What’s Your Reason?” took first place among 70 schools statewide in the third annual JustDrive PSA Video Contest, sponsored by NJM Insurance Group and the Pennsylvania DUI Association.
“We know there are consequences to distracted driving,” student Dea Monz said. “We wanted to showcase them individually and show, this is really what could happen, things you don’t think about besides initially getting hurt.”
She and fellow juniors Matt Sgro and Logan Purdy were honored for their work on the video, along with their sponsors, media teacher Matt Caprio and police Sgt. Jeffrey Sgro, school resource officer.
“We sat down for probably eight hours, 10 hours, and we just planned. We met a bunch of days after school, and we’d sit down and talk,” Matt Sgro said. “We wanted something that was going to catch people’s attention right off the bat.”
And that was before the actual recording.
“These kids just really commit, and they put in the time,” their teacher said. “It is hours and hours after school, and it’s hours of going downtown on a Sunday morning, meeting on the Clemente Bridge, just to get a five-second clip.”
All three of the students recently earned their driver’s licenses, and Logan assured they pay strict attention to the road.
“We don’t text and drive. We don’t call and drive,” he said. “It’s not just you that’s affected by it. It’s everyone around you. You’re going to get others hurt, not just yourself, and I think it’s a very selfish thing to do.”
For Jeffrey Sgro, watching his son and the others start to drive “was an eye-opening experience to me, because they grow these four wheels all of a sudden, and they’re growing up in a different time than we did.”
“They live their lives on their phones,” he said. “If we take their phones away, they’re lost. That’s their whole communications network.”
The JustDrive challenge is one of many Caprio’s media students have met.
“From a teaching perspective, these kinds of contests are a dream scenario, because they’re being exposed to important subject matter, and they are being challenged artistically and creatively to really make something that actually matters,” he said. “That’s what I love about it.”
Joined by classmate Duncan George, Dea, Matt and Logan also scored a video victory with their public-service announcement “This Is Temporary … Addiction Isn’t,” finishing first in the FBI Pittsburgh Citizens Academy Alumni Association’s 2021-22 PSA contest.
South Fayette, as a matter of fact, has won that particular contest four years running.
“Last year, we had possibly one of the best videos that we’ve ever made,” Matt Sgro said. “And then this year, we had to come out on top, and we were also facing the challenges of having everybody together trying to film this video because of all the rules and restrictions that were still happening.”
And while navigating COVID-19 guidelines, the students were working on the videos for both contests simultaneously.
“So we were super crazy about balancing the time between both of the competitions so we had quality products of each,” Matt said.
His father gives credit to the students’ teacher.
“He holds a very high standard for these kids. We make some videos together along the way, and I often wonder, how do we beat this one?” Jeffrey Sgro said. “Yet they keep doing it, and they keep surprising me. And it’s a pleasure to watch them work. You can tell that they’re not just doing it to do it. They’re doing it because their hearts are in it, and that’s what is really important.”
To view the videos, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAJyWqUrXZA and www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6f01J4UuSE.