Remember the name: Blaze Petuha from Kimi Ora Community School in Hastings…you could be witnessing a new entertainment star in the making, unearthed by Fonterra's Milk for Schools programme.
The school made a video to accompany their entry to attract former All Black skipper Richie McCaw to helicopter in to make a special milk delivery (part of the high-flying promotion celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme that has proved so successful McCaw will be visiting an extra school).
McCaw is visiting five primary schools on different days to deliver the milk – including Kimi Ora this week where the star of the video met the star of 148 test matches for the All Blacks and two World Cup wins.
The video was masterminded by the school's head of performing arts, Peter Tihema, after headmaster Matt O'Dowda lined up the school's entry to see if McCaw could make the aerial delivery (entries closed on March 19) – and Tihema immediately blazed a path to Blaze.
"If you watch the video they made , and the bloopers video, you get a real sense of why Blaze was chosen," says O'Dowda. "He's just one of those funny, funny kids – a real clown; there isn't much acting going on, he is just being himself."
Acting or not, Blaze's "clowning" has reaped 172,000 views of the video so far – and has even drawn comparisons with the emergence of Julian Dennison (the young star of Hunt For The Wilderpeople) and James Rolleston (the young star of another Taika Waititi film, Boy).
"Nah, I'm my own special thing," he said recently when asked by Hawkes Bay Today if he thought he bore much similarity to the leads in those movies.
You get a sense of Blaze's comic timing from the opening line of the video: "Oh kia ora, didn't see you there. If I knew you were filming today I would'a brung my flash shoes."
O'Dowda says that there is a serious sub-text behind all the humour and fun the kids and Tihema had in shooting it on Tihema's phone and then editing it.
"This is a decile 1A school," he says. "There are kids who, if they didn't get milk here, wouldn't be able to drink milk. They might get a bit of milk on their Weet-Bix at home and mum might get a bit in her coffee – but, as for the kids drinking milk, it just wouldn't happen.
"We find it makes a big difference – and that's why we have been part of the Fonterra Milk for Schools programme from the beginning. As a school we are really focused on health and wellbeing – and the daily fitness and the $1 lunch in the video are part of that.
"So is the milk; we find it helps the kids to be as good as they can be. If they were eating rubbish food or not eating at all, it really impacts on their energy to do their work and learn.
"The video was also great learning for the kids – not just the shooting of it but learning how to edit it as well."
• Fonterra have received such a high volume of entries that McCaw is going to visit an extra school on Tuesday April 10. Five schools have been short-listed with public voting to choose the school open from today until midnight on Monday, April 2. Get you vote in at richiesmilkrun.co.nz