Digital Media students (left to right) Owen Lucas, Faith Sommers, and Devin Tew swept the prizes in the Lafayette Society’s 2025 Creativity Video Contest.
FTCC students Devin Tew, Owen Lucas, and Faith Sommers had their work cut out for them when instructor Torie Quismundo assigned their Digital Media class a special task: create a video for submission in the Lafayette Society’s 2025 Creativity Contest.
Contest submissions needed to exemplify the values associated with the Marquis De Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution and Fayetteville namesake, including liberty, human rights, equality, religious tolerance, and the abolition of slavery — all in an original, sub-four-minute video.
The Digital Media Technology students, all local high school students who are dual-enrolled through FTCC’s High School Connections program, rose to the challenge, sweeping the prizes in the Creativity Contest with their entries.
Devin Tew earned first place for his work, “What Would Lafayette Do?” Owen Lucas’ “Marquis de Lafayette: A Champion for Human Rights in Modern America” was awarded second place. Faith Sommers earned third place for her video, “Marquis de Lafayette: A Champion of Human Liberty.”
“It could have been any type of video — animation, live action — really anything as long as it showed how Lafayette would act in today’s world and how his ideals can inspire others,” Tew said.
The project challenged the students’ skills in script-writing, animation, video editing, voiceover work, and utilizing Artificial Intelligence in creating content.
“In previous classes in high school, we used Adobe for stuff, but this was the first time I needed to make a full-on script with an intro and conclusion,” Lucas said.
Quismundo broke the project down into weekly assignments to help the student build skills to complete the video.
“I reworked their whole class after the New Year so that each week they learn a different technology that would create for them a resource that they could put into the content they created,” Quismundo said.
Creating a work focused on a historical figure from 200 years ago presented its own set of challenges.
“Obviously, there is no video of Lafayette. Even if you go to the Library of Congress website, you’ll find just a couple of images. That’s it. The visuals just aren’t there,” Quismundo said. “So they had to be extremely creative with their content and how they put it together.”
For Sommers, the answer was in her own artistic skills.
“It was taking me forever to find pictures, so I thought, ‘what if I just draw it?’” Sommers said. “Most of mine were little doodles that I made in Photoshop and then cut out to move across the screen, and I’d hoped that that would be more unique, because everyone else was doing a slideshow and AI pictures.”
The students had about a month to create and submit their videos and were recognized with their awards at a Lafayette Society luncheon March 2. The award included a cash prize, with $700 going to first place, $300 to second place, and $100 to third.
The event is one of several planned by the organization to celebrate the Farewell Tour of Lafayette. The occasion marks 200 years since the Frenchman was welcomed back to America as a “Guest of the Nation” for a tour of 24 states from 1824-1825.
View Devin Tew’s video submission:
View Owen Lucas’ video submission:
View Faith Sommers’ video submission:
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