COUNTYWIDE : High-Tech Yearbook: The Video

High school yearbooks, those time-honored tomes of black-and-white mug shots and group photographs, have a slick new companion at some Orange County high schools: the video yearbook.

That’s right, for about $40, students can slip a tape in a videocassette recorder and see 30 minutes’ worth of their best and worst moments, complete with music and background narration.

And for those who buy early, there’s a bonus.

“Everyone who buys by the deadline is guaranteed to be in the video,” said Kerry Staley, a representative from National Video Yearbook Inc.

The Nashville-based company has been filming yearbooks on the East Coast for several years but didn’t venture into Orange County until last year, when it filmed a pilot yearbook for El Toro High, Staley said. With the success of that project, the company will also be filming yearbooks for Trabuco Hills, Laguna Hills, San Clemente, Irvine, Ocean View and Marina high schools.

While video yearbooks are nothing new in Orange County--Edison High School in Huntington Beach filmed one as early as 1981--school officials said videos tended to fail for two reasons: The projects are too difficult for most students to take on themselves, and outside companies contracted to do the job rarely tape the events and activities that best capture the spirit of the year for the students.

“Most of the problems are with not getting the right information and not coming out on the right days to the events students are most interested in,” said Keith Sims, activities director at El Toro.

To avoid that problem, representatives from National Video work closely with El Toro and other schools. The students plan a yearlong agenda of events they would like committed to tape, help select music and even write the narration. Professional crews then come to the school on scheduled days to film events such as homecomings and talent shows and set up appointments to film individual students.

The cameras help capture action-packed moments, such as Friday’s football game against El Toro’s top rival, Capistrano Valley High, and last week’s Yellow Ribbon Day celebration at San Clemente High School, where about 150 students are from Camp Pendleton Marine families.

But videotapes, despite their drama, are not putting traditional yearbooks out of business.

At El Toro, fewer than 200 of more than 1,000 students bought the videos.

With yearbooks priced at about $30, the extra expense of buying a $40 video could have been too much, said Jenny Duncan, student body treasurer at El Toro, who said even she couldn’t buy a videotape last year.

And the old yearbook traditions such as signing classmates’ books or looking up an old boyfriend’s picture are impossible with a videotape cassette.

“They’re neat, especially for your senior year,” Duncan said. “But you can open a yearbook whenever you want and look things up. With the video, there’s pluses and minuses.”