Opunake Primary School and the MOA Cluster made the paper

19/11/2014

Rascals inspire students' winning movie

The Naughties earns Supreme Award

MICHELE ONG

Opunake Primary School children Jayden Churchill, left, with Louie Harman, Jade Ackerman, Hamish Wilson, Ivy Wall, and Charlie Weston’s short film, The Naughties, saw them named Supreme Winner at a digital awards evening.

A group of young Coastal Taranaki filmmakers was crowned cream of the crop at an inaugural digital media awards evening.

Opunake Primary School students Jayden Churchill, Louie Harman, Jade Ackerman, Hamish Wilson, Ivy Wall and Charlie Weston made a four-minute silent film, The Naughties, for the Moa Awards, which landed them the Supreme Winner award at the event.

The awards, made up of schools Matapu, Opunake, and Auroa (MOA), celebrate the use of digital media to enhance students' learning.

More than 500 guests attended the evening held at the Sandfords Event Centre last week. Visitors were ferried to the venue in classic cars.

The Naughties followed a group of pranksters up to mischief like placing fart cushions on their teacher's chair and a balloon under her car's tyres.

Opunake student Charlie, 11, said the group was inspired to make a film about mischievous children after she watched the movie, The Little Rascals.

Inspired by both the movie and the silent film era, the children decided they would do their own film along the same vein.

An appreciation for comedies, like Despicable Me and Toy Story 3, were also the reason behind the film.

Classmate Hamish, 13, said making the movie had its moments of frustration, especially when it came to trying to organise a group of six actors to be in sync with each other.

"There are people going different directions, that makes it difficult," Hamish said.

Learning they were nominated for an award was quite exciting but it was just splendid to be named Supreme Winner, the group told the Taranaki Daily News yesterday.

"We thought 'wow, wow'. There were so many movies [entries] out there which were really good."

There are already plans of making another comedy because it was all about "making people laugh and putting a smile on their face".

The Naughties can been seen at the website opunakeprimary.school.nz.

- Taranaki Daily News