MovieFest

Well, the Movie Fest National Finals are finally over. The longest award ceremony ever - especially considering very little was actually said about the short films that won and what was said was overwhelming negative and depressing. I left feeling embittered and somewhat baffled. Were we meant to feel guilty at walking home with prizes after subjecting the judges to watching our paltry efforts? Am I meant to now give up the hopeless dream that I never had of becoming a professional film-maker?

The judges were generally harsh and, in one case, quite mean and in the brief moments of their bloated and lengthy speeches when they weren't talking about themselves and their illustrious careers, they were pretty much discouraging the young students from trying to be NZ film-makers. They also had, it seemed, all worked with Peter Jackson. We were told, more than once, that he started making films when he was 8 on a Super-8 camera. When he was 12 he was editing like a _professional_*. It is hard to recall all the aspects of the judges' careers, and also Peter Jackson's film-making career, that were covered because the ceremony dragged on for about 2 hours. My brain seems to have frozen over all the bits that didn't irk, offend or fill me with righteous indignation. They seemed to believe they were giving a series of seminars on themselves and seemed a little indignant when the audience didn't have questions to ask them. Why the heck would we have questions to ask them? Sure, I appreciate professionals taking some time out to judge the competition but I was pretty tired and was, like much of the audience, just sticking around to find out how the films did and see if we won an iPod. The last thing anyone really wanted to do was to encourage them to speak for longer. Especially the first guy. Costa Botes. He was horrible. He slammed all the films for having bad sound. It seemed a little odd that straight after saying what he really cared about was how the films told a story (and that he 'didn't care about technical aspects'), he then hassled them all for having poor sound. He was then rude to the MC. When the guy held the microphone too close he snapped "if you push that mike any further up my nose, I'll punch you". He seriously needed to lighten up and learn some manners. I mean a third of the audience were Primary school entrants. You don't need to spell out the harsh realities of trying to make a living making films to five year olds. It was like having an Art critic arrive at a school fair and rubbish all the kids' finger painting because it wasn't technically professional. "You amateurs. You'll never make it as a professional artist with these shoddy, uneven strokes. Why your little doggy has five legs! When van Gogh was your age he was painting landscapes! You think you can make it as an Artist. No! You'll end up sketching caricatures at the mall and barely making a living drawing overweight housewives and their hideous children."

Even the nicer judges didn't really say much that was positive about the films. The competition made out like you would get specific feedback but there was nothing. I had expected a line or two of individual feedback from the judges for each of the three films in each category. Maybe a brief comment about what they liked in each one and/or some constructive criticism. Not even the winners got specific feedback. There wasn't even something brief like "It was funny" or "nice story" or something said to each contestant when they received their prize. It was like they didn't even know which film you were representing when you got your prize. The MC even forgot which primary school film won not long after handing out the prize and had to be reminded which film to play by the audience. The 'nicest' comment that was said about a specific film was before the winner of the Hobbyist category collected the prize. The MC said something like it was a nice film because it was a last minute entry that they saw after watching two really bad entries. Terrific. It is so nice to know that they publicly slate entrants' films as bad.

For all the technical criticism that was made about the sound in the entrants' films, the ceremony itself was not without technical difficulties. The DVD and then the computer crashed a couple times half-way through the winners' films.

It's a pity that the prize-giving ceremony** was so awful because on the whole the competition was quite a positive thing. I was really impressed by all 3 Primary school national finalists. The little kids were adorably cute and it is awesome to see youngsters making some good short films. The Secondary students did well too especially the winning 'Horror 101'. It was a superb effort. Technically well-made and really entertaining. They were the Grand overall winners as well and it was thoroughly deserved.

* Presumably this was told to make the 12 year olds in the audience feel inadequate? I mean there were a bunch of Primary school kids who had edited their films but their efforts in this amateur film-making competition were not professional enough for the judges' liking?

** It seems such a misleading name. Implies a sense of praise and accolade would be shown for the finalists rather than contempt.

Good Remake Movies

In a course I'm teaching you have to do a standard on comparing two versions of a movie and contrast the different film techniques used. It is set up at the moment to do it with Romeo and Juliet (the Luhrman versus the Zeffirelli version) and I just don't see Shakespeare working out with my class. For several reasons. The advantage of it is that script wise it is exactly the same. The standard requires you to compare the same scenes in two different versions of the movie. This means the stories have to play out in pretty much the same way. You need to clearly have the scene where 'character A meets B' in both or the climatic fight between X and Y. Therefore 'loose' remakes like Dawn of the Dead aren't really useful. Another complication is that I want to avoid horror if possible. This is unfortunate because a lot of remakes that spring to mind are horror movies. I've just done quite a few violent and/or gory movies and I'd like to show that studying non-violent movies is good too. It is for a class which is kind of dominated with a lot of non-bookish males so Pride and Prejudice probably wouldn't be their cup of tea. They got really angry at watching 'Looking for Alibrandi' because it was a "click flick". So far the only ideas I have are: The Manchurian Candidate King Kong Dracula (I know it's horror again but at least it's period horror). Does anyone have any good suggestions?

And conscientiousness beats neuroticism by a nose!

My Personality

Neuroticism

24

Extraversion

97

Openness To Experience

71

Agreeableness

44

Conscientiousness

26

Hmm, the percentages aren't as easy to read here as on Livejournal. The results were: Neuroticism 24 Extraversion 97 Openness To Experience 71 Agreeableness 44 Conscientiousness 26

What you dread the most as a teacher

Today was a terrible day.  One of our students committed suicide.  She was
in Year 10.  I was her form teacher last year.  Like many others, I’m
finding it is hard to escape a sense of guilt and responsibility.  You
keep thinking that maybe if you had noticed something, said something or
if she had come to talk to you then maybe, she might not have done it.

I don’t have a great deal of experience in the issue of teenage suicide.
Thankfully it hasn’t happened before in my time as a teacher.  In my time
at high school there was never a suicide in my year group.  I don’t know
what I thought a likely student to commit suicide would be like but she
really didn’t seem like a person that would.

She was an incredibly bright and vivacious person.  She was cheerful and
friendly and would always pop in and chat or call out to you when she saw
you.  She achieved good grades, played sports and was a talented dancer
and singer. 

I feel like I’m going to be sick when I think about how much potential she
had and how she could have really done anything with her life that she
wanted to.

The school seems to be coping with it well considering.  There are special
counsellors who have come in – the Traumatic Incident Team (TIT?).  We
were pretty thoroughly briefed and had a set notice to read to our class
period 1.  Because I had a Year 10 with several students who were her
friends I got the support of having a counsellor in class to help deal
with immediate reactions.

It turns out I needed the support.

I planned to follow Matt’s advice (his school went through this last year)
and model a suitably calm and respectful response to the tragedy.  I
didn’t want to encourage a mass hysteria or anything.  I got through to
about the 2 line of the notice and started crying.  I tried to hand over
the job of reading the notice but the counsellor made me keep going.  I
had to read a doubled sided notice whilst shaking and crying (reading
through tears and with wobbly voice probably doesn’t make for the best
clarity but I assume they could understand me).  I did feel better once I
had done it but it was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done as a
teacher.  The students were incredibly sweet about it.  The came over and
hugged me and asked if I was OK and took good care of each other.  We had
special cards to sign out any students who needed to go to the Whare
Awhina for grief counselling.   Many teary students had to leave (having a
bawling teacher probably set off some of them who might have otherwise
been OK).  With only a hand full of slightly shaken students left, we
decided to just play a quiet game.  It kind of broke the tension and kept
everyone focused without taking huge amount of mind power or being too
loud.  I was exhausted by the end of it and it was only 9.55.  I’d
forgotten how tiring grief can be.

The other thing that makes the day seem extra surreal is that we have
started really stringent absence procedures.  Rolls are taken at the
beginning of every class and any absences have to be immediately run over
to the office to make sure no has fled school or locked themselves crying
in the toilets or worse.

It kind of feels like we are in a bizarre lockdown.

I spend lunchtime over with form class and their teacher at the marae
which as become a bit of a haven of those close to her.  It is a beautiful
and quiet part of the school – away from the general noise of lunchtime.
Some kids were writing cards and letters for the family, a boy strummed
away on the guitar and we just talked irregularly.  There were a lot of
times when there was a sad but comfortable silence.  Some times people
shared their thoughts that were sad about losing her, other times we
laughed as we remembered some of the fun times from earlier this year or
last year.  It is a little odd but I felt more at ease with the students
than I did earlier in the staff room.  I guess it just felt like it was a
more natural and genuine, though inconsistent way of dealing with grief
than the polite discussion and sensible procedures that a professional
organisation has to have.

Gossip and discussion seems to be rife after lunch of what her reasons
might have been but I doubt I or anyone else will ever really be able to
comprehend why she did such an inexplicable thing. 

No surprise really...

My 'Inner Muppet' personality test...

You Are Miss Piggy

A total princess and diva, you're totally in charge - even if people don't know it. You want to be loved, adored, and worshiped. And you won't settle for anything less. You're going to be a total star, and you won't let any of the "little people" get in your way. Just remember, piggy, never eat more than you can lift!

The Muppet Personality Test

Actually, I thought there was a chance of coming out Gonzo or Animal as well.