North college film prospects bright

Northland College students Caylynn, left, and Qianna Titore, William Hohepa, and Okaihau College student Francesca Blaikie will be mentored by film-making academy Script to Screen.

A screenwriting workshop has revealed potential film-makers from Northland and Okaihau Colleges.

Early this month Script to Screen held a weekend workshop around developing story ideas for the screen. The workshop was open to anyone in the community with an interest in film and storytelling, with a special focus on rangatahi (youth).

The workshop attracted adults and young people aged 15-25, as well as their teachers.

Participants were encouraged to come up with a film idea they could work on during the weekend. They spent the first day with screenwriter Michael Bennett at Rawene Northtec Campus, learning about the fundamentals of screenwriting and finding the heart of their story.

An overnight stay at Tuhirangi Marae in Waima gave the group a chance to develop a sense of community around a shared interest in film-making, and Script to Screen showed a selection of short films.

The second day allowed participants to take a personal or a fictional story and learn how to structure it in a way that would captivate an audience. Each film idea received feedback and advice from the panel, including screenwriter Michael Bennett, local film-maker Susy Pointon and workshop organiser Eloise Veber.

A key outcome of the workshop was to give four of the young participants a mentorship to progress their film project. The four promising film-makers who will now work with Script to Screen to develop their film later this year are Northland College students Caylynn Titore, 16, Qianna Titore, 15, and William Hohepa, 17, and Francesca Blaikie, 17, of Okaihau College.

The judges were impressed by the strength of the film ideas pitched that moving personal stories and captured moments of local history, including the banning of te reo Maori in schools, and the Dog Tax Wars of 1989.

Lahni Sowter of Tuhirangi Marae attended the workshop and was trilled to see the young people develop their story ideas. "We are natural orators here in the North, and I believe that the medium of film-making and visual storytelling will play a vital role in preserving our culture and history, enabling us to keep our korero, our stories, and our reo alive for future generations," she said.