Recently, four sixth year Auchinleck Academy pupils – Ryan Burley, Jake Cocks, Kitty Ma and Stephanie McConnachie – entered a competition run by the Scottish European Educational Trust called ‘Our Films, Our Europe’. This competition was led by the school’s Modern Languages teacher Ms Morrsion who helped to film during the day of the workshop.
This project involved a film making process, where contestants have to plan and create a short film about the benefits, experiences and opportunities as a young pupil in the EU. It is an amazing chance for young people to learn about production as they get to work with film making professionals and different types of equipment and resources.
The first stage of the competition required contestants to submit a storyboard of their chosen plot, an idea for their film and a recording describing the storyline. Auchinleck Academy pupils’ final idea was to go on a road trip around Europe including countries such as France, Germany and Sweden. This involved pupils meeting fictional characters telling them about employment, education and immigration opportunities available for them as a European citizen. All these ideas were able to come alive as pupils managed to go through to the second and final stage of the competition which was to produce, direct and film. Pupils were very pleased with the outcome of their short film and the finished product can be viewed on the ‘Our Films, Our Europe’ website soon.
On Monday 21 March 2016, the team travelled up to the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh with our teacher, Ms Morrison. They were invited to a film premiere where all fifteen of the films were shown, which was then followed by an awards ceremony where Per Johansson from Eunic and Madeleine McGirk, a member from SEET, issued all seven awards to a variety of school teams. John Mulgrew OBE and Christina McKelvie SNP MSP opened the premiere by saying a few words about the EU and Our Europe project. Each school did a wonderful job with their filmmaking and every single one was deserving of an award. The team was ecstatic when their name was called for the ‘Best European Content” award and Stephanie McConnachie then gave an acceptance speech to express their joy at winning and to acknowledge the hard work that had went into the project. The whole experience was wonderful and they were all thankful to be a part of it.
Pupils were able to improve their language skills as part of this project; they boosted their French speaking skills and were able to learn two completely new languages in the space of three months. Learning a new language was interesting; it gave them an insight in to a variety of different cultures. It was a challenge but they all enjoyed it nonetheless. It was exciting learning how to film and edit, how to use iMovie and a variety of other software packages to make sure their film pieced together nicely. They all enjoyed being actors for the day and filming in various places around Glasgow City Centre – including George Square. Hopefully this will encourage young people, from S3-S6, to get involved with this project as you most definitely won’t regret it: you will meet new friends, learn new languages and adapt new skills that may come in handy when building up your CV to impress future employers.
By Kitty Ma and Stephanie McConnachie
