Fantastic Film School

Posted On 6 Feb, 2014 - By Andrew Donkin - With 0 Comments

In late January I was privileged to be a special guest at the first ever ‘Nighties’ held at the lovely Nightingale Primary School in Woolwich, south east London.

The Nighties evening was a collaboration between students and teachers who worked together to create a glitzy Hollywood style awards ceremony. The prizes being handed out were in recognition of some amazing superhero films which had been created by Team Gardner (Year 5) and Team Witham (Year 6.)

I was lucky enough to be involved at the very beginning of the whole project, when I visited the school in September. I was invited to talk to both classes about superheroes and comics – their theme for the term. The students were full of questions about writing a comic like Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, or writing a piece of TV animation like Superman: The Animated Series. We also looked at the different stages involved in creating a graphic novel such as the Artemis Fowl adaptations – script, pencils, inks, and colours and finally the lettering.

Later in the workshop the students started to write a page of comics of their own. Little did we all realise at the time that these scripts would grow into a much bigger project. The students kept working, and the scripts eventually jumped medium from comics to become short films. As if that wasn’t enough, the students then filmed the scripts taking on the acting and directing roles themselves. They did a fantastic job.

The Nighties were a glamorous ceremony to present awards for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and (most importantly for us writers) Best Scriptwriter. It was a great evening with students and their parents packing the hall to watch clips from the films and see the proud winners collect their awards. I was honoured to present the award for Best Scriptwriter to Joshua for Black Death. I even had a gold envelope to open with the winner’s name in it.