RHMS produces quick flicks
RHMS seven hour film award winners (pictured left to right): Krishan Gopal, Gredigan Wade, Luke Sheperd, and Sam Arellano.
by Amy Shanahan
Rocky Heights Middle School (RHMS) recently held its third annual Film Festival featuring the students from Nighthawk TV. Nighthawk TV is a class of 50 kids who meet daily to produce films and videos, and deliver a live-streaming broadcast to the school each day featuring the school news. Kids work in teams of four during the semester and produce the news and their films with professional level software and the most modern technology.
The Film Festival is the highlight of the semester, where the kids have the opportunity to showcase their films and videos to family members and peers. Films competed in various categories including, best comedy, best music video, and best trailer.
The most impressive aspect of the Film Festival was in the category of best seven hour film. On Saturday morning, all of the teams met at the RHMS technology lab, and received a list of elements that they were to include in a short movie which they had to film, edit, and produce throughout the next seven hours. The films could be on any topic but needed to be two to four minutes in length, and had to include four elements which were motion text, sunglasses, a reaction shot and the line, “Stop saying that!”
Films had to be completed by 3:00 p.m., and then were shown that evening at the Film Festival. Technology teachers, Christopher Cooke and Scott Melanson, led this team of kids and were quite impressed with the results. Cooke remarked, “It is amazing to think that 7th and 8th graders come into school at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday, and seven hours later they all successfully created short films of such high quality that it left us speechless!”
This year the Film Festival was attended by over 300 family members and friends, who all enjoyed the evening and were amazed by the caliber of films being produced by 7th and 8th grade students. The Masters of Ceremonies were two former Nighthawk TV students who are now active members of Rock Canyon TV. The winners of the seven hour film were 8th graders Khrishan Gopal, Gredigan Wade, Luke Shepherd and Sam Arellano with their short film entitlted, “Sweet Ride”.
