ROCKPORT — High school morning announcements have come a long way since the days when principals would click on the intercom switch with the inevitable torque of feedback (FWWWWWWAANNG!) and some inadvertent heavy breathing before intoning, “Good morning, students....”

Welcome to the Class of 2013, where students are the ones doing the morning announcements over a live TV broadcast — turning the eye-rolling, get-this-over-with formula into high-quality (and hilarious) video entertainment, all the while delivering the school’s morning news.

Two groups of mostly seniors at Camden Hills Regional High School in Chris Walker-Spencer’s TV Studio classes are responsible for the broadcasts titled WJAM News. Recently, in between sports and the “What’s For Lunch” segment, several of those students did a Saturday Night Live-style video parody of Brad Pitt’s cringe-worthy Chanel No. 5 commercial and a school re-enactment of the viral pop song, “Gangham Style” renamed of course, “Camden Style.” (To see these videos on Vimeo click on Chanel No.5 and Camden Style.) These brief video clips, called “intros”, are prerecorded to introduce the next segment of the five-minute daily broadcast.

CHRHS has always had a video/film department since it initially opened in 2000 (originally outfitted with analog editing equipment and cameras), but when the digital revolution took off, it has steadily upgraded to a top-notch facility with state-of-the-art film and video equipment, iMacs and software, such as Final Cut Pro.

“Six or seven years ago, Apple representatives came here to take a look at our video lab and went ‘Wow, this is great. We’ve only seen one lab better than this on the East Coast, and that was in Long Island,'” said Walker-Spencer.

Since 2006, under the guidance of Walker-Spencer, students have taken over the morning announcements using the power of this video/film lab to produce a high-quality broadcast with a filmmaking sensibility.

“Basically every second period, which is 80 minutes, we have a certain amount of time to come up with stories for intros and prepare for live broadcast,” said senior Eliot Grigo.

Every week, the students rotate their various roles from working behind the scenes on script, audio and video switching, and management of the daily video broadcast to on-screen talent, where students have to get over their fear of public speaking and read the news from the teleprompter, while injecting bits of their own personality into the broadcast.

They’re having a lot of fun coming up with new ideas that not only engage their audience, but also allow them to stretch their creative video skills.

“We pick up things when we’re watching TV or Tumblr or viral videos on Facebook outside of school," said senior Kristina Alex. “If we find it funny, we’ll bring it to the class and try to make something out of it.”

"Even though it’s one person’s idea, we all combine our ideas on set,” added Grigo.

Whatever they’re doing, it’s definitely working to get the entire student body to tune in each day.

“We try to make them funny,” said senior Jordan Knowlton.

“We get a lot of positive feedback from other students,” said Grigo. “I think the Gangham style [mashup] was probably the best received.”

They’re allowed to use the high school as their background for their stories, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get in trouble from time to time. Recently, when filming a video “intro” to go with a sportscast, two of the boys brought mountain bikes into the school and proceeded to ride them to the boy’s bathroom until an administrator called them out. At that point, Walker-Spencer had to pop out from where he’d been filming the boys to say: “It’s okay. They’re in my class.”

With their newly developing parody and satire skills, the students realized they might have gone too far in a recent ‘End of the World” broadcast Dec. 21 they’d done, standing outside the school.

“We decided to do a small, live breaking news segment outside talking about the world ending,” said Gringo. “And it was a joke, very sarcastic, about the levels of water rising. We had one part where we acted like we were freaking out and swore... that’s when Spencer comes in and told us....”

“...That footage had to hit the cutting room floor on the broadcast,” finished Walker-Spencer, smiling.

With only a half year under their belt, the students are already doing quality video work that even rivals first-year film students.

“They’re always working on ways to improve their own work or try new things,” said Walker-Spencer. “Eventually we’ll put these videos out online so the community can take a look.”

Check out their YouTube videos embedded in this article. It will give you a whole new appreciation for those dreaded morning announcements. In addition, meet the WJAM News crew up close and personal in the latest issue of Sound Off, sponsored by Five Town Communities That Care. 

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com