FRESH MINDS PARACLETE STUDENTS CREATE NATIONAL COMMERCIAL.

Byline: Peggy Hager Staff Writer

LANCASTER - What began as a class project has turned into a national commercial for teenagers in a media and leadership class at Paraclete High School.

Four months ago, senior R.J. Garcia saw a commercial for Winterfresh breath-freshener strips asking viewers to submit their own commercials for the company. Garcia took the idea to class and he and 11 classmates spent a week coming up with what would be the winning commercial.

``My dad was really pushing me to try and do it, because he knows I edit and stuff and I'm good. He's like, 'R.J. I really think you can do this,''' said Garcia, who wants to become a director. ``I was really surprised. I wasn't expecting to win; I kind of just did it so we could have something to do and have fun.''

For the teens who appeared in the commercial, they will get paid the national scale for actors - though nobody at Paraclete knows how much that will be.

``These kids were incredible editors,'' said media and leadership teacher Rick Hernandez. ``They all came together and decided where to shoot it, who to be in it and everything and made it happen and then we won.''

Their 30-second commercial shows students in class with a teacher writing on the blackboard. When a boy leans over to talk to a girl sitting next to him, she waves her hand in front of her face. The boy pulls out a stick of Winterfresh gum, which the teacher confiscates.

A fellow student then hands him Winterfresh breath strips. The commercial ends with the girl dropping a slip of paper with a phone number on the boy's desk as she leaves class.

Chosen from 3,000 entries and cut to 15 seconds, the commercial is being shown for 13 weeks on MTV, BET, MTV2, VH1 and WGN. The shortened commercial shows the two teens flirting in class, but cuts out the handwaving, the gum confiscation and the phone number.

The commercial's main boy and girl - seniors Alison Pickus and Steve Henry - will be paid for each time the commercial airs. The extras get one payment.

Garcia gets no pay, although he did all the filming and edited the results on his home computer. But he says he gets respect and will use the commercial in his portfolio when he attends college next year.

``I don't really care about the money because I want to go to college and major in cinema television, so I think that's really going to help me out a lot because there's not too many 17-year-olds that have a national commercial out,'' he said.

Garcia plans on attending Loyola Marymount University's film school or the University of Southern California. His ultimate goal is to become a director.

The commercial began airing Monday. Pickus and Garcia hadn't seen it yet but some schoolmates have.

``It's exciting when you walk into a classroom and people say, 'Hey I saw you on TV last night,''' Pickus said.

Henry's parents didn't believe him when he said he would be on TV.

``It took until my little brother saw it on TV and then I think they believed that it was actually me on TV,'' Henry said with a laugh.

Hernandez's media and leadership classes spend one semester organizing student activities such as dances and the next semester on media projects, such as editing commercials for local businesses and creating television shows for the campus.

Hernandez started the class nine years ago with a camera and some Radio Shack equipment.

``It's a hard audience to please, what they do, because they have to please the most sarcastic freshman to the most conservative administrator and they do a very good job of that,'' Hernandez said. ``They've done that all year and now we're at the point where we're saying, What else can we do because you guys got talent, and as you can see, Winterfresh agreed.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Paraclete Media and Leadership students, from left, R.J. Garcia, Alison Pickus, Dani Gaeta, and Steve Henry, work on their winning ad.

(2 -- color) Senior R.J. Garcia, who filmed and edited Paraclete's winning commercial for Winterfresh, hopes to become a director.

(3) Paraclete Media and Leadership student Alison Pickus is one of two students who will be paid each time the school's winning commercial airs on TV.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer