Saucon Valley eighth grader Maclaine Oskin.
This year I had the unique opportunity to take part in the “What’s So Cool About Manufacturing” video contest. The contest was originally created in 2012 to promote and pitch manufacturing jobs to middle school and high school students to start breaking down the previous unfavorable stereotype of manufacturing being an unclean and an undesirable job. In reality just the opposite is true. My fellow classmates and I were lucky to take a one day trip to go to Martin Guitar and film the employees, machinery, and beautiful facilities first hand.
I had originally thought little of manufacturing, like too many others. Yet minutes after walking into Martin Guitar, I was stunned. The place was spectacular! There was a vast variety of personnel there from the Chief of Technology to an International Design Manager who was in charge of creating specialty guitar models. The longer we spent there the bigger the revelation I had about the intricate, hard work that truly goes into making the famous guitars that we all know and love. Manufacturing isn’t just conveyer belts and assembly lines. In fact, I don’t believe I saw a single conveyer belt. It’s a large group of extremely skilled employees working together to make one cohesive unit with one goal, to make the best product they can.
The hard part came after going to Martin Guitar to film. Cutting a few hours of film and tons of pictures into a two and half minute video takes a lot of work. Needless to say it was a very time consuming process to edit it all down and to get everything perfect. It required numerous hours inside and outside of school to complete this project, with a few hiccups along the way of course. In my personal opinion, I thought the hardest part was trying to conveying how cool manufacturing really is and trying to create a result that changes others’ opinions and makes them have as great a revelation as I had myself. I knew that I couldn’t do better than a private behind-the-scenes tour of the esteemed Martin Guitar, but, I truly hope this video can be a close second.
I ask that you help our Saucon Valley team win the Viewers’ Choice Award for the “What’s So Cool About Manufacturing” video contest. We 8th graders on the iTeam have worked very hard on this project in the past months to represent the Nazareth based Martin Guitar as best we could.
Thank you for your support! VOTING STARTS FEBRUARY 22nd! Mark your calendars!
