When you combine seven high school students, a noted Hollywood character actor with 20 years experience, professional video camera operators, and the topic of manure, you get some interesting results. So says extension agent Norm Conrad, who worked with a group of students from Mifflinburg High School to develop an 18-minute educational video on how to reduce manure runoff and nutrient losses from barnyards. The final product, "Better Barnyard Management," was narrated by and starred actor Matthew Faison, who has appeared in a wide variety of films, television series, and movies, including Sliver, Bird, NYPD Blue, and M*A*S*H.

Students Val Stover, Ben Falls, Jeremy Allen, Celeste Conrad, Pete Holmes, Mike Sauers, and Marty Piorkowski researched the issues, developed the storyboard, wrote the script, and helped film and edit the program. The State Conservation Commission funded the video production to help implement Pennsylvania's nutrient management legislation. The video will be used over the next several years as a training resource to educate farmers, agricultural consultants, and nutrient management planners on how to identify problems and design solutions to nutrient losses from barnyards and feedlots.

The students interviewed experts, developed the storyline, and presented their concept to commission staff before filming the video. "Their diverse backgrounds helped them to solidify their vision and yielded a quality video production," says Conrad. "Each of these students already excelled in their respective academic, athletic, and artistic areas of interest," he explains. "We had a football team captain, a participant in the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Agricultural Sciences, a 4-H teen leader, an FFA speaking contest winner, and a yearbook editor and graphic designer."

To ensure that the students received academic credit for their work, Conrad developed a course outline and lesson plans, assigned textbook readings from the College's agricultural communications course, and graded quarterly examinations. But he says the best measure of involvement was watching these young people work with state-of-the-art equipment and professional media staff to continually refine and improve the video. "I also learned something from working with the students," he says. "If you recruit the best people, give them all the support they need to get the job done, and don't worry about claiming the credit, you can get a lot more accomplished."

More than 400 copies of the videotape were distributed to county conservation districts, county extension offices, and USDA field offices. The video recently was judged as the best agricultural video of 1997 and received the National Agricultural Communications Award sponsored by AT&T and the National Association of County Agricultural Agents at their 1998 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

-- Eston Martz