A Guide to the Best of Southern California : FOR KIDS : Yearbooks on Tape
The senior prom, homecoming week, pranks and graduation--the stuff of high school yearbooks, right? Wrong. It’s also the stuff of a hot trend: yearbook video.
“Traditional yearbooks are a lot more expensive to produce and not nearly as exciting,” says Tracy Thomas, who started a yearbook video service in Pasadena last year. He is working with five high schools and several middle and elementary schools so far this year.
“With the video you get everything and everyone in it, and it doesn’t cost the school anything,” he says. Students decide what events to tape, help with the editing, script and narration, and select background music--from hip-hop to rock. The average price of a two-hour video is $59.
Robert Levitan of Yearlook Enterprises takes a different approach. He provides students with training tapes, tape logs, music, packaging and marketing assistance.
After recording events with their own cameras, the teens send their tapes, along with instructions, to the Durham, N.C., company for final editing. Yearlook videos are about 30 minutes long and cost around $25.
“The students get to review and approve (the tape) and show sneak previews to help sell it,” says Levitan, who is working with 125 schools across the country, including some in California.
Information: Thomas Video Productions, (818) 545-1882; Yearlook Enterprises, (800) 476-5658.
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