Arviat duo go for gold
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
ARVIAT
No one could blame Arviat teacher Gord Billard for wanting to be pinched these days, just in case the recent success of two of his students at John Arnaluakjuak High School (JAHS) has been just a wonderfully vivid dream.
The video-production team of Arviat's Kevin Mikiyungiak, left, and Ethan Tassiuk are on an impressive roll, first winning the Skills Nunavut gold medal before going on to win the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission's FocusOnSafety territorial high school video contest this past month. - photo courtesy of Gord Billard |
Billard has helped JAHS students prepare for the Skills Nunavut TV/Video Production category for the past seven years.
He was with his students, Kevin Mikiyungiak and Ethan Tassiuk, when they took gold in Iqaluit this past month and qualified for the Skills Canada national competition at the Winnipeg Convention Centre from May 31 to June 3.
Less than a month later, he was "over the moon" again when he received notice the JAHS video-production team had taken top spot in the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission's (WSCC) FocusOnSafety territorial high school video contest.
"I certainly feel proud of the work they've done and the effort we've all put in," said Billard. "These kinds of results encourage them to go even further and, hopefully, encourage others to choose this course and consider audio/video as a job or career choice."
The contest was sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety.
The win will see JAHS receive $1,000, and video-production team members Mikiyungiak and Tassiuk $500 each to spend any way they want.
"I was just thrilled over the news, and I felt really good knowing Kevin and Ethan now had $500 each to take with them to Skills Canada in Winnipeg at the end of the month to do a little shopping and maybe pick up a new suit for graduation or something," said Billard.
This was the first year the video-production team was asked to bring a video along to the Skills Nunavut competition in Iqaluit. The four-minute long video had to illustrate the right to a safe workplace.
He met with Tassiuk and Mikiyungiak and they decided to look at a workplace and highlight five or six different ways someone could be careless enough to suffer an injury.
"Because of the other things we all had on the go, it was kind of dicey whether we could get it done on time, but, impressively, Ethan and Kevin pulled it together and came up with the award-winning video in the space of a week," said Billard.
They decided to focus on their school in the video, because even though the WSCC doesn't provide assistance for students, many people work there too.
"We brainstormed 10 or 12 different safety issues within the school that covered everything from not running across wet floors, to pulling plugs out of sockets properly, having someone hold a ladder you have to climb, and not walking around with scissors pointing out," said Billard.
The video is split into two sections, the first showing the 'don't', the second showing the 'do,' and relies on music and on-screen titles with no narration.
Billard said there was method-to-the-madness behind using such a technique.
"We actually did the video in that manner in the hopes of being able to use voice-overs to produce an Inuktitut version," he said, adding that all three thought it would be "pretty cool" to produce a version in Inuktitut.
The video was shown to the groups attending Skills Nunavut on the first day of the competition, along with the Arviat video-production team's other three videos. Billard isn't sure what mark the safety video received out of a possible 20, but he's more than happy with the final results.
"At the end of day, all that mattered - in addition to winning gold in TV/Video Production at Skills Nunavut - was that Kevin and Ethan got a high enough mark between the safety video and the on-site video they made in Iqaluit to qualify for the Skills Canada national competition," he said, adding it's a nice feeling to see the hard work put in by Mikiyungiak and Tassiuk rewarded.
"There's a big future in video, and the arts in general in Nunavut, and, when the right people in government see that, we may see a lot more money being pumped into those programs," he said.
"There's a lot of stories waiting to be told in Nunavut."
