As the semester comes to an end, students are working on final projects for their classes. A group of Mass Communication and Theater majors joined together to work on a short film for a class project. Tyler Goins, Olivia Justus, Jordan Hicks and Aaron Palmer teamed up on this class project for Media Management to produce the best possible short film. This short film starred Brett Loftis and Conner Jelly.  

The story of the film is based on ethics in the newsroom. In 2011, Arizona Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords was shot in the head at a local event in Tucson. Several news stations announced that she was dead before a doctor pronounced her death. These stations included ABC News, CNN and NPR. In the short film, their news station decided not to go with reporting that she is dead. However, if she did pass away, then it would look bad on their station since they decided to post the information late. Although, if you post this information and she is alive, then you can face many charges and fines. In the short film, they decided not to go with her death, and they soon find out that she is alive and was being prepped for surgery. There is conflict between two co-workers on whether they should announce her death or not. This soon backfires in one of the workers face which happened in real life when Gabriella Gifford’s was shot.  

 This short film took a total of four days to video and two days to edit. It came out to about four minutes long and is one of the best films the school has seen. The video will be posted soon and released to the public. When it is aired, make sure to go watch it and give it some feedback. Several short films will be coming out in the spring semester, so stay tuned.