Missouri is known as the "Show-Me State."

Six students in Hempfield High School's communications technology classes showed their skills and captured an award at the Academy of Scholastic Broadcasting's 4-State Video Competition in Springfield, Mo., Nov. 6 to 11.

"We did a total of, I believe it was, six competitions in the span of almost 72 hours, so it was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding," student Tyler Constein said. "We had a really good time doing all that. It was just an amazing experience to do as a senior and as somebody who wants to go into this field."

Students Bryce Jordan and Brady Falcon took home the top prize in the "Edit the Package" competition. "We got a whole bunch of footage and video, and it was our responsibility to edit everything together, add voiceovers, add sound effects, and make a news feature essentially."

The duo received a pleasant surprise. "Me and Bryce looked at each other when they announced we got first place, and we said, 'Whoa, what? Since when? What?'" Brady said.

Bryce and Brady placed second in the "5-Second Movie" contest. "We had to make a five-second short film, which was a very big challenge, because how do you fit a story with the beginning, middle, and end into five seconds?" Brady said. "We got the prompt 'hunger.' That was the one word that we had to work with, so we just decided that we were going to have a friend who's really hungry and a friend who has a sub, and the friend who's hungry just steals the sandwich. That was a really fun challenge because I've never done a video that's that short form."

Bryce was third in the "Cinematography Challenge." He had to construct a Rube Goldberg-type apparatus and operate it by himself.

All of the team members - Bryce, Brady, Tyler, Amelia Casanova-Brito, Reese Geiger, and Allyson Rineer - collaborated for a third-place finish in the "76-Hour Silent Film" event.

"We got our prompt when we were still here in the school," said Amelia. "Our field trip technically begun, but we were still here, and we spent an hour or so in the library brainstorming together, trying to storyboard it out, so it felt really collaborative then. I really liked that part."

The group made a love letter and tracked its journey. Amelia said Brady was trying to pass a love note in class. "The chain reaction was the progression of the note getting more and more destroyed to the point where he tried to give a cute little note to Allyson and it ended up looking like he was just throwing her a piece of trash," said Amelia. "I think my favorite part about that was when we had Bryce smother his face in ketchup. I think it made it very creative. I think that's what placed us."

Reese enjoyed the experience. "Some of the highlights were definitely getting to walk around and look at Missouri," she said. "We had competitions where we had to go out and walk around and find people and talk to people we obviously don't know. That was really fun to see how different things are there in Missouri rather than here in Pennsylvania. And it was a great experience to get to talk to a lot of different people with different experiences."

Hempfield High was one of only two schools from outside of Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma to take part in the competition. (A school from Tuscaloosa, Ala., was the other.)

The students give credit to their teacher Matt Binder. "I think that Mr. Binder gives us a lot of advice that helps us in moments of stress," Allyson said. "He always says, 'Uncomfortable is good; unsafe is not.' There were multiple times in my competitions where I was really nervous going up and talking to strangers. ... Then I remembered 'uncomfortable is good; unsafe is not,' and I was just ready to go talk to people after I got myself in the mental mindset."