College video takes the cake

By Sarah Schwager
BERWICK students have been named among the best young videomakers in the country.
The students from St Francis Xavier College’s Berwick campus were named overall national secondary school winners on Friday of the New Vision awards for their video entitled Cake Theory.
The awards were the conclusion of the 2005 Kid Witness News video education program, which saw 44 schools across Australia, including 15 schools from Victoria, put their creative skills to the test producing original video documentaries.
St Francis Xavier College was informed about a month ago that the students were state finalists and were invited to the awards ceremony at Warner Bros Movie World on the Gold Coast.
The six year eight girls Karen Williams, Genevieve Kesegic and Sophie Kneebone, Livia Macreadie, Sophia Anca and Allyssa Butera won state awards for editing and videography and a national award for videography. They were also named national and Victorian overall winners.
St Francis Xavier College Berwick campus English and religious education teacher, Shaun Healy, said the girls worked for most of the second term during lunchtimes and over the school holidays to get the video finished.
“They came up with the idea by themselves,” Mr Healy said.
He said the idea was to do with multiculturalism in Melbourne and the cake analogy helped show the different cultural ingredients.
Kid Witness News patron and judge Antonia Kidman said the cake metaphor presented an important message in an interesting way.
St Francis Xavier College was awarded $14,000 worth of Panasonic equipment for their prizewinning documentary.
Mr Healy said the girls flew up last Friday morning for the evening presentation and came back Saturday morning. “They were just looking forward to going up to Movie World,” he said.
“But they were ecstatic. They were pretty excited when they found out.”
Mr Healy said he came into the project later on after the teacher who had done most of the work with them left for Canada.
“When I first saw the video I was amazed at what they’d accomplished,” he said.
“The standard was extremely high. All the schools that participated did a fantastic job.”
Mr Healy said the event had been really kidfocused, which had been great to see.
He said the school was yet to decide on what the equipment would be used for but he said they intended to give students better access to media at the school.
Students from participating schools in Victoria, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland were given a range of Panasonic equipment to produce the five to sevenminute video on health, science and technology, local profile, news and current affairs, or a public service announcement.
Other Victorian winners include Kingswood College of Box Hill, which was named Victorian Primary School winner, and Geelong College and Melbourne Girls College both won technical awards.