Mt. Hope students win award for drunk driving film

Four Mt. Hope students collaborate on cautionary tale

By Ted Hayes
Posted 5/31/18

Four Mt. Hope High School students will soon be awarded for a short film they wrote and produced that warns against the dangers of drunk driving and poor decision making.

Mt. Hope News Network …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Register to post events


If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here.

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

Day pass subscribers

Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.


Mt. Hope students win award for drunk driving film

Four Mt. Hope students collaborate on cautionary tale

Posted

Four Mt. Hope High School students will soon be awarded for a short film they wrote and produced that warns against the dangers of drunk driving and poor decision making.

Mt. Hope News Network students Nick Simeone, Ryder Ferris, Jeremy Serbst and Kyrik Cordeiro will be honored for their film with a media award at Awards Night on Thursday, June 7, at Roger Williams University. The four spent much of the school year writing, filming and editing “Every 15 Minutes 2018: Mt. Hope High School." It was shown to students last month, prior to the junior and senior proms, to give students food for thought and  hopefully impress upon them the consequences of poor decision-making.

The 20-minute film tells the fictional story of student Jared Murphy, a troubled Mt. Hope student whose drinking and driving kills one of his best friends, played by Liam Bullard, and seriously injures another student played by Ana Swansea. It was shown prior to a mock crash in the high school parking lot, at which Bristol police and rescue crews used the Jaws of Life to extricate the victims from their cars, and take Mr. Murphy to jail for drunk driving.

Putting the film together took months, and many hours of footage were shot before the film was edited down to its final version.

“The hardest part was putting the whole thing together,” said Ryder, who is also busy with three sports and theater. “There was a lot to it.”

In the end, the friends think they got it all right, though there are a few minor details that they noticed when finished. One of them was Jared’s beard, which he shaved just prior to the accident scene. Since earlier footage portraying actions earlier in the day showed him with a beard, the filmmakers had to get creative to keep his clean-shaven face hidden.

“We worked around it though,” he said.

2024 by East Bay Media Group

Barrington · Bristol · East Providence · Little Compton · Portsmouth · Tiverton · Warren · Westport
Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.