Heather Latter
Submission falls short
A senior French class at Fort Frances High School, including both French Immersion and core French students, had hopes of being deemed Ontario’s top French class of 2014 in a video contest held by the University of Ottawa.
But while their bid fell short, the students said creating the video was a great experience.
“It was a fun experience,” noted Libby Paleczny.
“It was friendly competition because we didn’t necessarily know who else [in the province] was doing it and it helped us work together as a class because we tried to use everyone’s ideas and strengths,” she explained.
“It will also be really nice to look back that this is what we got to do in our Grade 12 year,” she added.
French classes across the province were invite to create and submit a one- to two-minute video in French that “shows how they stand out with their bilingualism, their leadership, or the service to the community.”
Participants of the winning video are offered a $2,000 admission scholarship to the University of Ottawa while students who worked on the four runner-up videos are offered a $1,000 admission scholarship.
The FFHS French class, which includes both Grade 11 and 12 students, chose to make a parody of a French song shown to them by French teacher Dany Michaud called “Jacuzzi” by Radio Radio.
The song was entitled “Salle de Classe.”
Student Cameron Penney noted past winners had done song parodies, as well, including popular songs “Gangnam Style” and “Thrift Shop.”
“We couldn’t find a karaoke version online so we just made [the] karaoke version ourselves and then we recorded the audio,” he said.
“We had seen [the contest] online and in Grade 10 we made a video because even though we weren’t eligible, we did it as a project to see if we could do it,” Penney added.
“Now that we were eligible, we thought, ‘Why not?’”
The class completed the bulk of the work on the video only a week before the Dec. 1 deadline.
“I wrote the song in October, and we argued a bunch and quit working on it for a while,” Penney recalled.
“And then on the 24th [of November], we decided to go ahead with it.”
“It was crunch time,” Paleczny admitted. “But we’re pretty happy with it—it’s pretty good.”
While the class of 16 thought they stood a good chance, unfortunately the video did not land them at the top of the pack.
“I’m quite proud of the final product,” Michaud remarked. “I thought they did a heck of a job.
“I was a little scared that they weren’t going to get it done but they came through, pulled together, and worked as a team,” he added.
The class came together with writing the lyrics, recording audio, as well as editing the video.
“Even getting the ideas to get the right shots,” Paleczny noted.
The class also felt it had learned a lot from making the previous video two years ago.
“What we did two years ago was a mash-up of different songs and we broke off into smaller groups, so each group did a little part of the song and it didn’t really have that cohesion,” Penney explained.
“The transitions from one song to another were really bad.
“So I went ahead and wrote a whole song myself because I felt having one writer might tie it in a bit better,” he reasoned.
“So we knew some things that worked well and what didn’t.”
Paleczny reiterated she’s quite proud of what they accomplished.
“This is what we’ve done,” she said. “This is who we’ve become and parents might want their kids to do that, so we can bring back the French in Fort Frances.
“It’s just a good representation of what we can do,” Paleczny added.
“And how even if we’re all different, we are all very proud to be in French.”
Paleczny said going to the University of Ottawa was her third or fourth choice of school for next year. But had the class won the contest and scholarship, it likely would have been bumped up to her first choice.
“I think there were three or four students who said University of Ottawa was their number-one choice,” Penney noted.
Although they didn’t win the scholarship, he agreed it was a great way to learn.
“I like bringing these projects into the classroom,” Michaud said. “It fits in well with the French curriculum.
“It makes them work on their individual strengths,” he added. “Everybody gets to shine a little bit in some way in the process, so that’s nice.
“And it changes up the classroom work a bit.”
