Student’s safety video is awarded $1,500 2nd prize

Janet Sutherland, Plymouth-Canton Community
Schools video production teacher left,
 Jillian Plant, the student/2nd prize winner
accept their awards from Dan Fuoco, of The
Suburban Collection.Jillian Plant knew her 35-second
 video regarding distracted driving had been chosen
as one of the winners in The Suburban Collection
Focus On The Road video contest.

It wasn't until the official ceremony at Plymouth High School Jan. 10,  however,  that she learned she had been awarded second place and was presented with a check for $1,500 by Dan Fuoco, social media manager for The Suburban Collection.
Plant is a student in the Plymouth High School video class taught by Janet Sutherland although she is a student at Canton High School.

“Most of the submissions we see show the end result (of distracted driving),” noted Fuoco, who served as one of the contest judges. “A lot of students create videos with death or the extreme circumstances that often result from distracted driving.
“The thing about Jillian's video was that, along with it being thoughtfully prepared, was that everything in the video happens before the car was theoretically put into drive. We thought that was a great message.”

The goal for students is to conceptualize and produce a video that embodies how dangerous it can be to drive distracted. The Suburban Collection reviewed the videos against pre-determined judging criteria focused on concept, creativity/originality, message content, impact and production quality to select three winners. This year, The Suburban Collection received more than 110 entries, with approximately half of them from Plymouth High School which won the prize of $1,000 for the most submissions in the contest.
Sutherland accepted that award check, noting that the money would be invested into new equipment for her students' video field projects.
“It wasn't just students in my classes that entered; it was students from all three Plymouth Canton  high schools that participated,” said Sutherland, who added that she will use her students' input to decide on what specifically the $1,500 will be spent on.
“I think it's important to think about the people in your car as well as yourself because when you drive distracted, you're not only impacting yourself, you're impacting everyone in your car and even people outside your car,” Plant said. “I thought it was important to incorporate that in my video.”
Plant said she puts her phone in the console of the car and urges her friends to follow her example, even though she knows they  have difficulty with it. “I have friends who drive while distracted, but they don't do it while I'm in the car because I ask them not to,” she said. “Obviously, there are other forms of distracted driving besides phones, but that's the main one.”
A team of Troy High School students won the first-place prize of $2,500.