Penn-Trafford senior wins third student Emmy for public service announcement

Penn-Trafford High School’s video production students are no strangers to bringing home hardware from awards competitions.

They regularly earn nominations and wins at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Student Production Awards. That group includes senior Phelan Newman, who brought back two NATAS Awards from this year’s Mid-Atlantic regional competition, including her third win in a row in the public service announcement category.

“Making the project was so much fun,” said Newman, 18, of Penn Township. “This was probably my favorite out of the three PSAs that have won awards.”

Newman said her 2023 entry, “Tears of a Clown,” was inspired by the silent films of early cinema. She took on the role of a clown whose happy facade gradually starts to crumble, a metaphor advocating that people going through mental health issues shouldn’t try to simply put on a happy face for the world.

“The inspiration initially came from the (2022) movie ‘Babylon,’” Newman said. “There was a song in the film that was just so phenomenal, and I got this vision of a crying clown.”

Newman started sketching out the idea after she got home from the film, “and it just grew from there.”

Over the past three years, Newman has also added more depth to her entries.

“In 2021, we only used stock footage for the PSA,” she said.

Last year, Newman’s anti-bullying PSA used a minimalist set-up, just a lone spotlight on a crumpled sheet of paper. For “Tears of Clown,” Newman shot with the same no-frills backdrop as the anti-bullying video, and was able to recreate the imperfect film captured by vintage cameras, lending a little more of an ominous air to the piece.

And as in past years, she kept the budget low.

“I didn’t have a spotlight, so I used a giant flashlight hanging on a tripod,” she said. “I made a costume from an oversized T-shirt and a bunch of loofahs! Everything was definitely homemade.”

In addition to the NATAS Mid-Atlantic Award, “Tears of a Clown” also won first place at the Student Television Network’s spring national competition, and it will go on to compete in the NATAS National Student Production Awards in the fall.

“We’ve been nominated for the nationals before, but Penn-Trafford has never won,” she said.

Newman said the guidance she’s gotten from teachers such as Vinton and Josh Bujakowski has had a huge effect on her.

“Their guidance has just been incredible, and they’ve really changed my life overall,” she said. “To look back and think where I’m at now, I couldn’t have done it without them,” she said.

Below, see Penn-Trafford senior Morgan Arlia’s NATAS Award-winning video essay, “Suicide Awareness.”