LUCEDALE – Three Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College students used their filmmaking skills to help their school explain a key part of their educational experience.

George County Center students Devin Havard, Kyle Churchwell and Jaron Churchwell created a 2-minute, 41-second video explaining how advisors help students find their path in higher education.

They worked with George County Center Instructional Coordinator Will Overstreet during the process.

“We wanted to show everything that has to do with the advising process,” Havard said. “Will asked if we’d put together a tape to shed some light on it.”

Dean Cheryl Balius said the new video will be used in the orientation process.

Balius and Overstreet surprised them with a red carpet ceremony Thursday featuring an Academy Award theme. They awarded them “Georges,” complete with envelopes revealing they had beaten the likes of George Lucas and Randy Newman.

The trio had all summer to work on the project, but felt their creativity benefited from some procrastination and the pressure of the deadline.

Havard, a second-year MGCCC student is listed in the piece’s credits as the location manager, had done a previous version. He wanted to go to the next level, incorporating the Churchwell brothers.

“We’ve all been doing this kind of stuff since we were in middle school,” Havard said.” I had made a video using my iPhone for the college. That’s kind of what started it, and we wanted to make a better video.

“These guys are my best friends, so I wanted to get them involved in the next project. It turned out good, but I wanted to take it beyond what a cellphone could do.”

Kyle Churchwell, who is a senior at George County High School getting college credits in MGCCC’s dual-enrollment program, handled the directing, editing and visual effects. He estimated shooting time at about two weeks, then a week editing.

He used Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects to put together the visuals. Churchwell said he’d learned editing by doing video game pieces that get shared around in that community.

Their project evolved after taping Balius and language arts professor Mandy Withrow. Withrow is a student advisor.

“We were going to have a commentary throughout the whole thing and interviews here and there,” Kyle Churchwell said. “But once we got our interviews filmed, we saw it was sufficient to cover the commentary.”

He had done a video for his high school’s soccer team which won them $4,000 in a contest. He brother is credited as the composer in this project.

Jaron Churchwell, a second-year MGCCC student, wrote and recorded the background music in two days. He found the origins picking around on his guitar, then based the rest of the music around it using Logic Pro X.

“You have to set the mood with the music,” he said. “If you laid a sad, mellow song, it won’t get the point across that the advising is a good thing, they’re helping you.”