HIKI NŌ, Hawai‘i's new wave of storytellers.

[intro music plays] Aloha, this is Kevin Matsunaga, the HIKI NŌ teacher at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School on Kaua‘i, with some exciting news about what many consider the Super Bowl of student video contests, The National Student Television Network competition.

Coming up this weekend, and for the first time ever, local students will be competing in STN right here in Hawai‘i.

The Hawai‘i students who also happen to be HIKI NŌ students will be competing at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki at the very same time that mainland students will be competing 2,500 miles away in Long Beach, California.

STN has also been called HIKI NŌ on steroids because both experiences teach students profound life lessons, but STN condenses the experience into three days of intense competition.

The best illustration of this is the PBS Hawai‘i documentary, Aloha Atlanta: HIKI NŌ at the STN competition.

Here is a special encore presentation of that documentary.

Enjoy.

[slow guitar music and ocean waves] So, we started going to these conventions from, you know, 2004 when it started, but you would see the same schools, you know.

You would see the same type of, of media programs that went and then once we hit, you know, uh, that era of HIKI NŌ, uh, that PBS Hawai‘i, uh, program in which students are getting hands on training, you know, teachers are getting trained, uh, to produce quality work, quality journalism.

That's when we really started to see sort of like the boom in Hawai‘i, as far as, you know, how well the Hawai‘i students are doing.

[sound of ocean waves] I don't think I would have done as good as I'd done at STN without the training HIKI NŌ has given me.

It may be hard training, but it's, it's worth it at the end.

Hitting the HIKI NŌ standards really helps with hitting the STN standards because with HIKI NŌ, they expect you to put out your best.

And whatever you do, you can learn from HIKI NŌ, and that whole process and take it out to what you do at STN, and you putting, you're putting your best foot forward and you're doing all you can to make that video as great as you possibly can so it can place.

Our class prepared for STN by starting practices early in the year.

We started in September, and we held about five practices, I think.

And it gave us a chance to work to figure out how each other works and to figure out how the competition might feel like if we were actually there.

Our schools are strapped with, with financial burdens as, as it is.

And so, you know, we don't receive any funding from our schools to attend.

Uh, everything is raised by our efforts, or parents pull that out of their pocket.

And so, we fundraise all year long.

We had 29 people going, so we had eight chaperones and 21 students going.

In addition to the, the money that we have to raise, of course, we need the support from our parents.

There was just no way that I would be able to do what needs to be done for us to go on this trip without the support of our parents.

We have car washes, we have bake sales, we have golf tournaments, which is one of the biggest fundraising event of the school year, along with the big breakfast, um, as well.

And then when we go to the convention, you know, coming along as chaperones and taking vacation time to work.

Well, at the airport when we were getting ready to go to STN, we're all real wide-eyed and fresh faced and well-rested, and everyone's saying bye, but everyone's saying hi to the new, big thing.

So, it's kind of like everyone's jittering with excitement and everyone's like, “Oh my god, we’re going, guys.” [guitar music] By the time we got there, most of the schools had already, you know, checked in.

And so, we were one of the late, late, later schools to check in that night.

And it's just a flurry of activity.

And it doesn't matter if you've been there for two years prior to that, and this is your third year at STN.

You're excited the moment you step into that hotel.

You can just feel it.

There's just electricity that is there.

It was very overwhelming to, like, go from Hawai‘i to Georgia, mainland, and be a part of something like that because there's a huge amount of schools that come over from across the nation to compete in the same things that you're gonna compete in.

There's thousands of students, and they're all working towards the same thing that you're doing.

And they're all interested in the same kinds of things that you're interested in.

So, it's both competitive, but it's also really cool because you get to meet new people, and you get to learn from professionals in the industry.

For me being this, my first STN, my impression of this was more of nervousness than being excited, because you're around all these strangers, it's in one hotel, so it's a lot more crowded than your usual hotels.

I've never seen something so high, so big and structured that way.

Because right now, the biggest and tallest hotels that we have right now is the Marriott in Lihue, and that's not nearly as tall as the one in Atlanta, Georgia that we went to.

Bright and early the next morning, the Chiefess students dive headfirst into a competition that has earned its ominous title.

Our first competition is the Crazy Eights competition, and it's eight hours of craziness.

[upbeat symphonic music] There's two different teams, there's the news magazine, and there's short film.

We had eight hours to produce a news magazine.

Before the competition starts, we know that we're gonna get a topic and this year was science and technology.

And we spent like, the first two hours actually just Googling things on what we can find the story and calling people, and the stories took a really long time to find.

So we had a really small amount of time to put the whole stories together.

And so you add the complexities of trying to get stories in a location that you've never been to, with trying to just find any good lead, you know, in this, in this place that you've never been to.

It just adds to the, the complexity of the whole, uh, contest.

In Crazy Eights for the short film category, they normally give you a topic and a prop.

So, this year, our topic was True Measure, and we were given a six-inch red ruler that we had to use in our video and it had to show up in our video.

We did our story on a homeless girl who was jealous of this girl who's more wealthy than she is, and she's always mean to her.

But once she realizes that the homeless girl was homeless, her and her friends kind of felt for her.

For us, it took about an hour to think of the story and plan it out.

So after that, you go and film.

There's boundaries on where you can go in Atlanta, or around the, where the hotel is.

So, we've never been, well, I haven't been to Atlanta before, and I don't know where everything is.

So we had to just go and adventure and find a place to film, and then after that you edit.

Our editing takes place in maybe the last couple hours, depending on when you get the stories.

And it takes place in this huge ballroom and it has all the students in there.

And you would see a lot of like, “Oh my god.” There'd be a lot of frazzled people and a few calm ones, but you can tell that they're kind of clenching everything.

And in the last minutes, everyone's screaming at each other.

We're all like, “Come on, we need to get this done.” So, it's really stressful.

That's when like, all of the nerves come out, and we're all just exploding, ‘cause if we miss a deadline, we're all gonna be really sad, and there's a lot of tears from me because I’m dramatic like that.

Deadlines are deadlines.

They’re hard, they're fast.

And, and if you don't make it, sorry, you know.

Uh, good luck next year.

But it's, and it's sometimes it's a really tough pill to swallow for students, especially if you've worked on it for eight hours, and you run into maybe a technical glitch at the end with your laptop or your computer and it doesn't export it quite in the amount of time that you want it to, or something happens where you run into some other, you know, glitch that's out of your control.

A lot of students in schools are in the same ballroom editing with you, or along beside you.

And you just see some people finish, or some people are like, breaking down, having a mental breakdown.

And it's just really stressful.

Fifteen minutes.

I was a complete and utter wreck because it was just intense.

You can feel their tension, you can feel their stress, and as a parent, that just magnifies by 10 times.

I feel that I had butterflies in the stomach.

At times, I couldn't watch, but I wanted to watch.

Well, we did make our deadline, and we had maybe a minute or two to spare.

And it's crazy because there's a whole lot of students just standing in line to turn in their video.

So, they had to like, push people away and say that, “Okay, yeah, you made the deadline.

You have to go on the side to celebrate and stuff.” So, yeah, it was good that we made the deadline.

Five…four…three…two…one…we are closed!

So, after day one where Crazy Eights is finished, and you're able to relax a little bit, not really.

Your emotions just flare up again on day two, because it's an exciting new day of competition, and it's the day where the parents or the chaperones can't say anything to the students.

I'm on the anchor team with Kallen Wachi and Napua Canales.

Basically, what the anchor team does is they give you a hard copy of a new story, which this year it was on the Civil War, and we had three hours to produce a video and turn it in.

And we've never ever done anything about history.

Even Taylor was saying, why are we doing things that are so old and stuff like that.

I was really thinking that we weren't gonna make the deadline, even if we had three hours.

I think it was 45 minutes before the deadline, I decided to go out already to go to find a spot.

And I found this spot right above where we were sitting.

And so I told Taylor and Napua, “Hey, I'm going to go up there to see if that's a good spot for our anchor segment.” I walked there and I set up the camera, and I still see them, ‘cause I was looking down.

I could see where, like, what they were doing, and I could see them still producing the script.

And I was just getting so nervous at that point, like, I had the camera set up but no anchors.

I have nothing, I have nothing here to edit or to submit.

From the moment that we finished our script in the anchoring, um, we had maybe 5, 10 minutes left until our actual project video was due.

So we're sprinting, like we're sprinting for our lives up to Kallen, and that was when things started getting really tough.

And controlling everything was really hard.

So we started rolling, and that's when everything fell apart with me.

I started to cry because we did about 15 takes and we didn’t get them right.

She just was bawling.

Like, she just, she stopped and she, she just cried on Napua’s, Napua’s shoulder.

And I was like, “Okay, we're not going to get this done.

We failed.

We failed everything.

Guys, I'm sorry.” And that's when things started getting better because Napua had me, Kallen had me, and we all just hugged, hugged it out.

And that's when it works.

And that's when things start working.

And we got it the take after I finished crying, and after that it was like, relief.

Everything was good at that moment because even if we didn't make the deadline, I still had that one moment where we started going up the highroad again.

We came out much stronger and became more confident in what we were doing.

[slow piano music] [cheers] The most important thing about STN is like, getting to know people better and learning.

Because I've improved so much from our first STN practice with, uh, my PSA team, to the way that we worked and got a story done at STN.

We've gotten a lot better.

We've gotten faster and, um, got better at thinking of ideas and stuff.

And I've just gotten to know them better personality-wise and as friends.

My role in the team was mainly finding the base of the idea so we could build up upon it and find the correct idea.

So, I threw out all these ideas, and even though it may be kind of nervous, for me, because, Iz is going to help, we’ll just work, I just have to throw it out there.

And sure thing, I thought of one.

Uh, my partners thought of others.

We combined those and we created the PSA, and then right when we ended, we're waiting for the editing time to come up, uh, our pen pals from the different school came asking for, if we had a certain battery, because their battery died, and they needed a battery.

Turns out, we actually had the correct battery.

We lent it to them, and they finished their video in the time that was allowed.

So, we were happy for them, and they were happy because they finished on time.

I think it's part of that feeling of ‘ohana, and that, you know, that commitment that you have to yourself but also to the people around you.

The STN convention in Atlanta was about so much more than competing and winning.

It was about making human connections, and to that end, Kevin Matsunaga devised a special project to help his students bond.

On the trip, when we got to the airport in Lihue, we gave out these cards to these, to all of our students, and we gave them one at a time.

There's a person on that card, and you kind of had to watch them and follow them all day for that day.

And you had to write something positive about that person, like, following that topic in what, how they acted or what they did that was really nice for another student, and how they helped just in general.

You don't know who wrote that about you.

You're really happy that they think highly of you, or they think of you in that way.

And it brings everyone closer together because now we know that someone really thinks good thoughts about us.

When I first got the cards back, I read all of them, like word for word, and I didn't skip anything.

And I felt like, really touched for, because of all of the positive things that they wrote or drew about me in those cards.

I think we all bonded because, you know, we're all put into the convention.

We all had to share a room.

We were in groups.

We had to work together for competitions.

And so, we were forced all to cooperate, and I think regardless of that, we were all just happy to be in each other's company.

This whole STN experience, you know, it forces them to have that human connection with others, you know, um, in doing stories about people.

You know, work with each other, and do that on a face-to-face basis instead of you know, on their phones.

I mean, it's, it's a huge skill that is slowly dying because of our dependence upon electronics.

[cheering and clapping] Once students hand in their completed projects, their fates are in the hands of the judges, a panel of industry veterans who rank each entry based on a predetermined set of criteria.

No one but the judges and STN officials know the outcome until the award ceremony on the last day of the convention.

[brouhaha] Being from Hawai‘i, on the closing ceremonies, we all agree to sit together.

And we all try to sit in the same section of the ballroom so that anytime any Hawai‘i school wins, we just go crazy for each other.

And so, and we're all competing against each other, but, you know, our tie being from Hawai‘i, it doesn't matter.

You know, those, those rivalries don't matter at the convention.

It's just about, you know, cheering for Hawai‘i.

And so far, we're the only state to do that.

We hear the word aloha like, on a daily basis, probably, and we try to incorporate that into our daily lives.

And if someone's booing you, it doesn't feel good.

But if someone's cheering you on, then it's like, you're happier, and you feel better.

So, we all try to cheer each other on.

And even if they, if another school from, from Hawai‘i beats us, they’re still our family and we still cheer them on, because they didn't do anything wrong.

They just beat us.

We are all from Hawai‘i.

We are all as one team.

There's like 15 schools here, we're gonna just, we're gonna be here as a team, we're gonna be for each other, we're going to be there, um, when everybody wins an award.

The 2016 Anchor Team Contest winners, starting with middle school.

As soon as they said the word anchoring category, I grabbed everyone's hands that were near me and I held on to their wrists.

I may have hurt them a little bit, but I was really nervous because they didn't call her names for honorable mentions for the two of them, third, and second places.

So I was like, “Okay, are we not gonna place?” So then at that time, I was kinda like, getting ready to cry.

I was like, “Okay, what did I do wrong?

What did our team not do that another team did?” And when they announced first place – The middle school Anchor Contest is Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School, Our whole class stood up and we started screaming, and I'm starting to jump everywhere on everyone.

And you can hear everyone in Hawai‘i just yelling.

It's not about winning, but winning is really nice, and it just feels good to know that your video got recognized and it placed.

A PSA, or public service announcement is a message used – So it went through the honorable mentions: second, and third place, and I was like, “Oh, gosh.” So then at that point, we were all like, it's okay.

It's okay, because we didn't think they were going to place.

So we were just like, “Oh, we're probably not going to win.” And the middle school PSA contest winner for 2016 is Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School.

We were really surprised when they announced this was first.

I was really thrilled, but also kind of, it was kind of surreal, ‘cause I didn't really expect that.

Our class entered nine different competitions and won or placed in eight of them.

And it was probably one of our best showings at STN that we've ever had.

And it was among the best STN showings ever for Hawai‘i schools as a whole.

A total of 34 awards was garnered by schools from the Aloha State, validating hope by his reputation as – One of the leading states in digital media.

Um, and I think we all kind of share that vision, and we want to show that, hey, you know, we're in this tiny, you know, group of islands in the middle of the Pacific, but we can do just as well, and sometimes even better than our counterparts on the mainland, uh, that might have more opportunities or resources.

Um, but it's a special thing that, that we have here in Hawai‘i.

Well, I'm proud of the other Hawai‘i schools for placing because I think the main thing during the closing ceremony was just showing the aloha spirit.

Because when we were there, all we were doing was rooting for our state.

And we were clapping loudly whenever a Hawai‘i school won.

And I think it wasn't more so about winning, more was it for just sharing the aloha spirit.

We traveled to STN to compete, and that is definitely, that's one of the reasons we go, but that's not the main reason that we go.

It's not for winning.

It's not for placing.

It's many wonderful life lessons that you can learn from the challenge and everything you do in the competition, because you learn how to handle stress.

You learn how to work with others and cooperate with them.

You also learn how to kind of take control and act like how you're supposed to act.

Getting along is really important because later on in life I’m going to have to know how to work with my coworkers and other people.

I think it's very important for us for, to be Hawai‘i strong.

And I think it's really important for us, for people in the state of Hawai‘i to know what we can do.

And with even HIKI NŌ, I think that's one of the things why we're so good at what we do.

We produce really good stories.

I think our training that we've had with, with PBS Hawai‘i, our teachers, our very passionate teachers, has given us opportunities that, that not a lot of kids can have.

It's just showing you the power of digital media in storytelling.

I see all the different skills that our students gain from, you know, working on a story, from the research that they have to do to the contact that they have to make, the interpersonal skills that they have to establish and maintain with the people that they're interviewing as well as their partners and, and, and other people that are connected to their stories, to the writing that's involved in their scripts, and then using technology to go and capture that story and put it together, and to tell a story that makes sense and can impact people.

Uh, that should be on a test.

That should be how we measure our students.

[music fades] [upbeat pop music] The whole team is stressing out right now.

Um, still exporting.

They got about a little less than 15 minutes.

Uh, the funniest one to watch is Uncle Gerald.

He’s our rookie on this trip.

Um, you can see him right there.

Look at him, look at him.

[cheers] [music continues]