Inside The Shiplake Oscars

Last week, Head of Media Studies Marcus Milburn hosted the fourth annual Shiplake Oscars to celebrate and showcase the work of his Sixth Form pupils.

On Friday, the Lecture Theatre filled up with students and staff alike, to watch the final product of months of hard work. The Year 12 pupils had been working on Movie Introductions. Audience members were treated to three unique Thrillers, all of which had people on the edges of their seats. Ben Stacey, Finn Wallace and Oli Heap produced Kronos, which introduced the story of a mysterious masked man with a deadly weapon and a plan to kill. Sasha Boden, Hannah Sexton and Sadie Foster produced Taken or Gone, which again featured a thrilling storyline. The last preview to be shown was Shade, by Joe Greenaway and Matvey Sintsov, which showed the characters being followed through a wooded area by a hooded figure.

Taken or Gone earned Sasha, Sadie and Hannah the Shiplake Oscars for Best Production Design and Best Cinematography, while Ben, Finn and Oli came away with Best Editing and Best Film for Kronos. Joe and Matvey’s production Shade won Best Directing and Best Performance, for what we’ll call the darkly comedic acting.

Year 13’s music videos saw a brilliant variety of creative works put to music and all pupils were granted permission to use the music for their projects. Jade Miller produced a video for Jessie Ware’s Selfish Love, while Lauren McNally chose to work with Supermarket Flowers by Ed Sheeran. Also by Ed Sheeran, a video for Thinking Out Loud was produced by Matt Cucksey, Fergus Howard-Jones, Charley Burgess, Anna Whitelaw and Darius Braun worked together to produce a video for Mumford and Sons’ Snake Eyes and Tom Ibbitson, Robbie Rayne, Jack Turnbull and Oliver Greco chose Franz Ferdinand’s classic Take Me Out. Brad Wilkins, Joe Booth, Will Kidd and Lucas Symth worked on a video for a song called Indigo by a friend’s band while Georgia Frye, Freddie Bowcock, Jamie Pond and Brandon Tan produced a video for Izzy Bizu’s White Tiger.

Jade Miller’s video for Selfish Love won two awards, one for Best Production Design and one for Darcy Timms’s performance. Take Me Out won its producing group the award of Best Editing and White Tiger won its group Best Directing. Best Cinematography was awarded to Brad Wilkins’s group for Indigo and the Best Music Video Award went to Fergus Howard-Jones, Charley Burgess, Anna Whitelaw and Darius Braun for their video for Mumford and Sons’ Snake Eyes.

Mr Milburn would like to thank all of the groups for their hard work over the previous weeks and months, and thanks those who came along to the Shiplake Oscars.