| StudentCam | |
| Frequency: | Annual |
| Location: | United States, Guam |
| Years Active: | 2006-present |
| Participants: | Middle school students (grades 6-8) High school students (grades 9-12) |
| Genre: | Documentary filmmaking competition |
| Patron: | C-SPAN |
| Website: | StudentCam.org |
StudentCam is an annual competition selecting the best video documentaries created by middle and high school students. Each year, StudentCam releases a different prompt about the United States for student filmmakers to respond to in a documentary. It is sponsored by the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network's (C-SPAN) Classroom project.[1] All winning documentaries are available to watch on the StudentCam website. The top 25 winners are interviewed for television broadcasts and have their documentaries aired on C-SPAN.[2]
The aim of the competition, as stated by C-SPAN, is to provide an opportunity for young people to voice their opinions on current events.[3] Middle and high school students can compete alone or in groups of up to three, entering a video documentary between 5 and 6 minutes in length, which presents more than one side to the selected topic and includes related C-SPAN programming.[1] Each year a new theme related to current affairs is provided, and competitors must use this as the basis for their entry.[4] Subjects have ranged from video game violence to illegal immigration.[2]
The deadline for entries is in January each year[5] and the StudentCam winners are announced live on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, usually in March each year.[6] Following the announcement, the top 25 entries are shown on C-SPAN,[7] one documentary each weekday morning, accompanied by a telephone interview with the student filmmakers.[2] All of the winning documentaries are available on the StudentCam website.[2] The winning filmmakers receive cash prizes typically totaling $150,000, with the grand prize-winner receiving $5,000, in addition to being featured on C-SPAN., 150 entries each year are chosen as prize-winners, and 11 teacher awards are given to teachers who incorporate the competition into their classes.[6]
The sponsor of the StudentCam competition is C-SPAN Classroom, a free membership organization providing teachers with C-SPAN materials for classes and research.[6] Promotion of the competition is often supplemented by local cable providers.[8]
The StudentCam competition developed from a documentary competition called CampaignCam, run by C-SPAN during the 2004 presidential campaign as a way of including students' views about the election. The StudentCam forerunner won a Beacon Award in 2005, conferred by the cable industry for excellence in communications and public affairs.[9]
In 2006, StudentCam was launched by C-SPAN, adding a requirement that students include relevant C-SPAN programming.[1] The 2018 competition received the most entries to date, when over 5,700 students from 46 states and Washington, D.C. submitted a total of 2,985 submissions.[10] The grand prize winner of the 2009 competition, Sawyer Bowman, a 10th grade student from Davidson, North Carolina was congratulated by President Barack Obama via a specially-recorded video message.[3] A first-prize winner in the 2010 competition, Matthew Shimura, met First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House in April 2010 during a town hall meeting for her "Let's Move!" initiative, to talk about fighting childhood obesity, which was the subject of Matthew's video.[11]
| 2006 | Anthony Hernandez and Dustin Gillard | Anywhere USA | |
| 2007 | Zach Chastain, Bryan Cink and Ryan Kelly | Jupiter or Bust: The El Sol Solution[12] | |
| 2008 | Scott Mitchell and Nick Poss | Leaving Religion at the Door[13] | |
| 2009 | Sawyer Bowman | Cancer. It's Personal | |
| 2010 | Madison Richards, Samantha Noll and Lauren Nixon | I've Got the Power[14] | |
| 2011 | Carl Colglazier | The Great Compromise[15] | |
| 2012 | Matthew Shimura | The Constitution and the Camps: Due Process and the Japanese-American Internment'[16] | |
| 2013 | Josh Stokes | Unemployment in America[17] | |
| 2014 | Emma Larson, Michaela Capps, and Sarah Highducheck | Earth First, Fracking Second[18] | |
| 2015 | Anna Gilligan, Katie Demos and Michael Lozovoy | The Artificial Wage[19] | |
| 2016 | Olivia Hurd | Up to Our Necks[20] | |
| 2017 | Ava and Mia Lazar | The Tempest-Tossed[21] | |
| 2018 | Adam Koch and Tyler Cooney | Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote[22] | |
| 2019 | Mason Daugherty and Eli Scott | What It Means to Be an American: Citizen Accountability in Government | |
| 2020 | Jason Lin, Sara Yen and Amar Karoshi | Cmd-delete: Technology’s Damaging Effect on Democracy in 2020[23] | |
| 2021 | Theodore Poulin | Trust Fall[24] |