To anyone considering taking it, Video Production is the easiest class I have taken since web design. Once again, I have sat staring at this computer for an hour, with another forty minutes to go. To my right, Matt Kelly also stares at his computer, an iMac that behaves like it was dropped as a baby. Likewise, to my left, twenty other people stare vacantly at Shockwave games, the hands, the shambles of their empty lives. At the front of the room, the teacher has inflated himself to "ward off predator" stance as he confronts something shiny.

Matt and I have found ways to entertain ourselves. If we didn't, we'd spiral into a comatose twilight state.

Matt and Matt's top five methods of distraction:

1. Inordinately beat each other. If the teacher interferes, beat him too.

2. Harass the teacher to let us do news stories such as "Is our school prepared for attack by dinosaur?" and "SRHS video teacher android from the past, demands human sacrifice." When teacher rejects, argue. When teacher continues to refuse, hold magnets up to his head and rub.

3. Hide in the news room and play with the SRHS time machine, a metal box of unknown purpose or origin which we have determined is our key to a wacky romp through the circuits of time. If teacher hassles us about deadlines, reassure him that we can simply go back through time if we have more work to do.

4. Claim we are going out to gather footage for our stories and instead exploit the power of having a camera to hold free reign over the campus. Pull friends out of class, have Mortal Kombat-esque melee battles and hit stuff with big sticks.

5. Staying in our seats and staying on task, completing the items in our packets in the order listed and not screwing around on the internet. Writing story proposals, interview questions and scripts, capturing SOT and B-roll, logging with Final Cut, editing the SOT and B-roll together into a linear, coherent story and submitting the quicktime-formatted stories through the local server.