Productions
Students who like to take pictures, create beautifully designed layouts, create engaging and content-rich environments, and be part of the social hub of the school are apt to love Yearbook class. Students learn how to manage a full-scale, full-budget production class that involves brainstorming, creating, editing, enhancing, advertising, selling, and distributing our very own Indian Trail High School & Academy Blaze yearbook. Using their own talents and interests in fashion, gossip, What’s Hot and What’s Not, the latest trends and the ones out the door, yearbook students have their finger on the pulse of the school. Yearbook students are divided into teams responsible for our beautiful and engaging Blaze yearbook, a tradition here at Indian Trail that started our very first yearbook.
This internship introduces students to print and online journalism, as they become staff members of the print and online publication The Pulse that serves the Indian Trail community. As staff members, students help produce the publication through writing news stories, shooting photographs, designing graphics and illustrations, creating comics, selling advertisements, and laying out pages using Adobe InDesign. A variety of talents are needed to produce a successful journalism product and Indian Trail students have proven over the years they have exceptional communications and creative skills, winning more than 30 state awards over the past eight years in the categories of investigative reporting, feature and column writing, photography, graphics and advertising. In 2014, The Pulse took first place in the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s General Excellence category, competing against the largest high schools across Wisconsin.
This internship introduces students to both video production and news broadcasting. Enrolled students are responsible for the production of Indian Trail High School & Academy’s daily video announcements and accompanying news segments for The Trail Mix news show. The course requires in-studio and on-location video production. Students learn techniques in audio recording, studio lighting, camera operation, video editing, and video graphics. Students are instructed in how to conduct on-camera interviews; to cover sports and artistic and academic events; and to produce news programs.
Skills mastered in this class could lead to real world paid internships and jobs in media services such as filming, editing, anchoring, graphic design and production, broadcast journalism, script writing, and story production. In-class exercises and assignments outside of class will address information gathering to serve the community of Indian Trail High School & Academy. Skills taught in this class will also enhance careers in photography, marketing, and public relations.