Garrard County Smokes the Field

Talent certainly runs in this Garrard County family. Like his brother before him, Coty Sanford and a team of four classmates took home first place in the recent Keep It Real Remix video contest.

Coty’s brother, Parker Young, won three consecutive titles from 2007-2009 and now works for Disney Studios in Florida.

In their first try, Coty and his team produced the 30-second video, “3000,” an anti-tobacco commercial that earned the team $400 in first-place money.

Coty split the winnings with Christian Cain, Daryl Hickle, Alex Montgomery and Dalton Smith, fellow sophomores at Garrard County.

The video features stop action and is interspersed with still photographs and a voiceover, all presented in a professional format.

Which surprised the boys following the two-hour filming session one afternoon in November.

“The filming seemed chaotic and afterward we were shaking our heads, saying, ‘I don’t know what we have,’” Dalton said.

Then came the magic of the editing room.

Coty filmed the commercial with his iPhone 5s and edited it in his father’s recording studio. Robbie Sanford plays piano in a country band.

On a MacBook Pro with the program Adobe After Effects, Coty and Dalton edited the footage into a 30-second package.

Coty also supplied the voiceover that explains that every day 3,000 teens try their first cigarette.
In their video, one of the boys gathered refuses the offer of a smoke.

(To view “3000” and all the winning videos, visit www.keep-it-real.us.)

After they entered the contest came the waiting game.

Just before the awards ceremony in February, a Garrard County High official told the boys that they had an award.

So, Coty and Christian drove with their parents to the Kentucky Theatre.
As one award after another was presented and the boys’ names were not called, tensions rose.

“My parents were looking at me like, ‘Did you really win something?’” Christian said.
Finally, with only one award to go, the good news was announced.

“That was a real shocker,” Coty said. “My first thought was to button my suit.”

The next day at school was like any other. They were hardly greeted us conquering heroes. Then classmates saw the video on television.

Winning videos aired on television stations throughout the region and were shown as part of pre-show ads in local cinemas.

“Once our friends saw the video on TV, we got some attention,” Coty said. “Obviously, they were surprised.”

A month after the awards ceremony and the boys still hadn’t divided the money.

They did agree that Coty would receive half of the winnings, knowing he would use the money to buy more equipment.

There are more video projects in their future.

“This was fun and we want to do it again,” Dalton said.