Video expertise helps in time of challenge

“We are very lucky to have a school with these capabilities,” Mark Laster said.

Laster, high school TV production instructor, will spend hours taping and editing videos of the more than 160 graduating seniors as well as speeches by school officials and students in order to create a virtual graduation ceremony for the 2020 graduating seniors of Pea Ridge High School.

Laster, who also runs the RTV website, said the current technological capabilities allow him the flexibility to create a quality program.

Because of social distancing restrictions, he will not be allowed to have student assistants as he does for ball games.

“The thing about northwest Arkansas is we’re pretty well blessed,” he said, recognizing that not all schools have the equipment Pea Ridge does. “Editing software is not that difficult to get.”

He said he and principal Charley Clark are trying to “keep everything the same” for the graduation ceremony even though there can not be more than 10 people in a room at a time, because of the governor’s restrictions.

“We’re going to go by the same format and try to keep things as normal as possible. We’re going

to do the prayers and the speeches and make it look like it usually does, but of course, it’s virtual,” he said.

“A situation like this would never have been thought about years ago,” he said, recalling that over the past several years, he’s been able to use the TV production program training students as they’ve filmed sporting events, Veterans Day programs and many other events.

Now, with the current restrictions, he and school officials are “taking a lot of things and making the best of it.

“Improvising and creating something new out of what they already had. We want to make something as special as we possibly can in a rough situation for them,” Laster concluded.