This weekend three Oak Park journalism students traveled to Drury University for the regional competition called VidCon.

Seniors Jordyn Bensyl and Ally Laytham are returners from 2013 and freshman Skylar Benjamin joined them for her first competition. The three set off Friday afternoon and arrived on campus later that evening.

After settling in it was time for the first competition of the event, “Midnight Madness.” In this event, teams were given a topic and instructed to produce a short film under three minutes total run time in under five hours. This year they had to include the phrase “second place is not bad.”

The team came up with an idea and even finished a little early. The overall film took second place! This was a huge accomplishment coming from not placing at all in 2013.

The rest of the weekend went well.

Laytham competed in spot feature, anchoring and live shot. Latham produced a news story on the topic “My Drury life” in under four hours.

Benjamin participated in commercial and live spot. She produced a 30-second commercial in three hours.

Bensyl competed in editing, newswriting, and anchoring. She was given footage and instructed to tell a story in under two hours.

Overall the weekend was a success and the girls represented Oak Park very well! They are very proud of all the work they produced.

With a two years of experience, a D3100, a Canon and their sparky personalities, they sat in the chairs of the award ceremony to be totally blown away to hear their names called for for “Midnight Madness.”

“I wasn’t expecting to hear our names, but I’m really glad that we got a chance to redeem ourselves from a couple years ago,” Laytham said.

They placed second in “Midnight Madness;” and Bensyl placed second in newswriting and third for her mail in news story.