Auckland Museum blog

Post updated: We’ve got the winning movies up on our website now, check out this amazing work!

This time a couple of weeks ago I was quite an anxious individual. I had just been putting together the finishing touches to a very special event – the I AM Making Movies Awards ceremony.

I was running through check-lists to ensure that the correct prizes would be awarded to the winners, that the certificates and trophies had arrived, that I had ordered enough refreshments for the guests, that the school kapahaka group would make it here safely – you get the idea; lots of things that could go wrong and so needed to be checked and checked again. Amazingly everything worked out smoothly and the Awards Event was a great success!

Keisha Castle-Hughes and Mika X at I AM Making Movies awards premier.

I AM Making Movies was a digital movie making competition for students in Years 5 to 13. The idea was to give students the chance to be digitally creative with our collections – and was in truth a bit of an experiment for us.

We launched the competition in March 2010 and as it was the first time we had run the event we were not quite sure how it was going to progress.

We were initially worried about the number of bookings for our Masterclass Seminars with Mika and Piri. The seminars aimed to explain some of the various processes involved in film production and to give the students an insight into the real roles that exist within the creative media industry.

We then worried about the number of entries that we would receive and even how the schools would approach the questions that we had set. As is often the case we were worrying about nothing – over 350 students attended the Seminars, we had nearly 50 movies submitted by the closing date and over 200 participants. This was truly amazing considering that we had never run the competition before. Next year we will know just what to expect and will be hoping that it gets even more popular.

Judging the movies was one thing that I didn’t worry about – I knew that this was going to be the fun part of the whole competition. The creativity and production skills that each and every film maker displayed was amazing. Our most difficult job was selecting the finalists – if only we had been able to award prizes for best bloopers, sword fights and dramatic deaths. I don’t have space to describe all of the winning entrants so I have decided to concentrate upon the Supreme Winner in the  Years 9 -13 category.

Supreme Winner Years 9-13. Click to view video.

As some readers of the Museum blog may be aware, food seems to be the flavour of the month around here with the Kai to Pie exhibition. But that isn’t the reason why the Supreme Winner in the Year 9-13 category was selected – it was honestly just an amazing co-incidence! The judges described Rutherford College student, Jorja Grogan’s winning entry, A Food Fashion Show, as:

“as a creative outside the box approach to the competitions criteria with the fusion of stop motion animation and the idea of how technology has changed food packaging over time. With the use of text and a food inspired fashion show accompanied by a jitter bug soundtrack, Jorja has touched on the growing concerns surrounding the issues of our everyday domestic waste in a fun and entertaining short film.” As soon as we get it up on the Web, I’ll let you know. The videos are up on our website now!

The fact that the movie could easily fit within the Museum’s major temporary exhibition itself speaks a great deal about the quality and vision of the movie that Jorja produced.

We’ve had some great feedback from the students and teachers who took part in the competition and thanks to this we have a good idea what we need to do next time to ensure that we build upon the success of this year’s competition. More detailed Seminars that tackle some of the aspects of post-production and editing are certainly areas that we will be seeking to explore. If you have any other suggestions it would be great to hear from you too (either by email, or in the comments below).

This weekend I will be relaxing at home instead of worrying about potential disasters but I will certainly look back on the I AM Making Movies competition with a sense of pride and also with a sense of anticipation about what next year’s event will develop into.

I hope that those of you who didn’t get around to entering this year will take the time to view the finalists’ movies and be inspired to join in next year – I guarantee that you will be amazed at the vision, professional skills and creativity that can be unleashed given the right opportunity and support.

I can’t wait to start planning our next new media competition event and hope that you will decide to come along with us and join in the fun too.