‘Beautiful World’
Dunbar Seniors Focus Winning Video on the Beauty of the Bluegrass
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Meet the next Jim Nantz and Clint Eastwood. They attend Dunbar High School, and don’t bet against Alex Gomez and Andrew Von Nieda making their aspirations a reality.

The high school seniors have already accomplished much.

Alex -- the future sportscaster like Jim Nantz of CBS -- already works in TV, serving an internship at WKYT Channel 27 on the Scholastic Ball Report.

Andrew -- whose favorite film director is Clint Eastwood -- has been creating videos for the past four years and already is a professional.

He was paid by the school soccer team to make a highlight video, and a local businessman has contracted him to create an advertising video.

And Alex and Andrew shared a $200 award in February for winning the grand prize in the sixth annual Keep It Real Internet Video Contest.

Keep It Real -- Don’t Drink is a community wide campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of underage drinking. The contest invites teens to make their own anti-alcohol messages in the form of 30-second videos.

Alex and Andrew won Best Picture in the Academy Award format for “Beautiful World,” whose production values were a cut above the other 75 entries from 15 high schools and homeschool groups.

To the sounds of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 1,” “Beautiful World” focuses on a pair of closed eyes (Alex’s) intercut with shots of Lexington and the Bluegrass.

The voiceover (Andrew) states, “How are you supposed to see how beautiful the world really is under the influence? It’s time to open your eyes and see how beautiful the world really is. Keep It Real, Don’t Drink.”

“I was really impressed with the video,” said Beth McKenzie, who teaches Dunbar’s TV production class, which contributed 14 entries to the contest. Dunbar had three first-place and three second-place winners.

“The video features Lexington prominently and it’s pretty powerful,” McKenzie said.
Andrew had the idea for the video since last year when he worked on a Dunbar video that won for best cinematography.

Then over one weekend in December, Alex and Andrew shot all the video, edited the footage, mixed in the sound and voiceover -- and, voila, they had a winner. They worked so fast they even squeezed in a trip to the Kentucky-North Carolina basketball game on the same weekend.

Producing the video was fun. Waiting to learn whether they had won an award was another story.

Sitting in their seats at the Kentucky Theatre, they sweated out the awards, waiting to the very end before learning they were grand-prize winners.

“It was definitely nerve-racking,” said Andrew.

Said Alex: “When they called our name, we jumped up, hugged and went up on the stage.”

The boys hope to win more media awards as they pursue their careers in college -- Alex at UK where he will keep working at Channel 27, and Andrew at Watkins College of Art and Design in Nashville.

“Alex and Andrew make a good team,” said McKenzie.

The pair have been friends since eighth grade and played together in the Dunbar soccer program together.

This is how important video work is to the boys. On this season’s soccer team, Alex scored the only goal in a 1-0 Dunbar victory over Madison Central to win the regional championship.

“I worked hard in soccer but I worked harder with Andrew to make this video,” Alex said. “Winning this award was more exciting than scoring that goal.”

And that’s keeping it real.