Mayfield Students Inform, Entertain on 'The Loft'

The show created by Advanced Digital Media Production students at Mayfield High School last year was admittedly crammed, lengthy and mostly appealed to proud teachers.

Now that the young producers, writers and editors have transformed "Mayfield Spotlight" into the hip Vimeo channel entitled, "The Loft," students, parents and online users are recognizing their work.

"I was walking home the other day and had a middle schooler say, 'hey I recognize you,'" junior project manager Jordan Stinson said.

"Yeah, we're real big in Poland," producer and Mayfield senior Tony Gaydos said to a room of laughing classmates.

That sort of wry humor almost seems like a prerequisite at The Loft, a student-created news and variety show the students have created as their project for Mike Bokovitz's Advanced Digital Media Production course. The group hopes to pump out a new episode each week.

The shows are about six to nine minutes long and feature witty news packages and interviews that blend information and laughter. One features the sideline glory of a Mayfield Wildcats football sophomore, while another takes a face-paced look at the recent Science Showcase.

"We want it to be a little more relatable to the kids, we want to have a little bit of flare to it," Jordan said.

Jordan and Tony are two of seven advanced students. The advanced class also gets plenty of ideas and footage from Digital Media I and II students. Those students constantly create video projects for practice, but some of them end up in the Loft Episodes.

"One thing we're not low on is content," senior project manager Luke Fikaris said.

Bokovitz first taught the class in the 2010-2011 school year. Now, it's grown to five different period classes with nearly 100 students.

Bok, as the students call him, enjoys witnessing their camaraderie the opportunity to open kids up to another career possibility.

"That's probably my favorite part, seeing kids who are looking for their thing, and this is it," he said. "It's awesome."

Most of the students say they want to continue video production beyond Mayfield High, including Luke, though he will clearly miss his Loft mates after this year.

"It's going to suck to graduate," he joked.