Anna Kraut (15), George Arthur (17), Paddy Kubala (17) and Kaman Chung (16) joined forces over the weekend of May 16-18 to produce a seven-minute film titled Spike and Doody, as their entry in the Dunedin section of the national 48-hour film competition.
George said there were 50 teams entered in the Dunedin competition, with 10 in their age group (under-18).
There were six cities participating in the competition: Auckland, Hamilton, Gisborne, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
The best 12 films from each city go through to the national finals.
‘‘The best 12 may well include none in our age group, but ours was selected to go through,'' George said.
Anna said the team members based themselves in Balclutha for the weekend, then travelled to Dunedin to participate in the draw for film genre just before the competition started.
‘‘We drew the romance genre and to ensure there is no cheating there are three random elements the judges said had to be in each film.
‘‘This year those three were: a brush must be used as a prop somewhere in the film, a character called Kerry Post, who is a perfectionist, must appear in the film, and the sentence ‘wait a minute' also has to appear,'' Anna said.
Once the draw was done in Dunedin, the team had 48 hours to write, film, edit and burn their two to seven-minute film and return it complete to the judges in Dunedin by 7pm on the Sunday night.
Paddy said they decided in the car on the way back to Balclutha ‘‘pretty much'' what their film plot would be.
‘‘We probably had one of the smallest teams involved.
‘‘A lot of them had a writer, a director, a producer, an editor and then actors on top of that - we just did it all ourselves.
‘‘Actually, being a small group was good, because it made decisionmaking easier,'' she said.
The film could best be described as ‘‘an awkward romance'', Paddy said.
The character played by Anna was the perfectionist who could see no good at all in her son's choice of a woman.
‘‘Basically she tried to turn Paddy [Kubala] into a clone of herself,'' Anna said.
George said some of the films would be shown on C4 (Channel 4) at 8.30pm on July 3.
Paddy and George had both entered the competition last year and George said the quality of films was definitely higher this year.
‘‘But we think we raised our own bar higher as well.
‘‘The judges said our film was getting close to the standard of the adult entries,'' George said.
For Anna, an exchange student from Germany, this was one of her last activities at St Peter's College before she returns home.
‘‘It was so much fun - just the rush of doing everything,'' she said.
Kaman, an international student from Hong Kong who had been in Gore only a few weeks when filming took place, said the last hour was the best.
‘‘Racing to Dunedin from Balclutha - would we or wouldn't we make it? It was so exciting,'' she said.
Deputy principal Lindy Cavanagh-Monaghan said the one team from the school that entered last year's competition had spun off into three different teams entering this year.
‘‘One of our teams even managed to enlist the help of the local police [in Gore] for their movie.
‘‘They offered them props and even a police car in the shot, if they needed it.
‘‘It's great to see the young people getting involved in such rewarding activities,'' she said.
