WS - Co-Operative Film Festival Review

Thursday marked the beginning of the 45th annual Co-operative Film Festival and for the second year in a row I was lucky enough to be on the Media Studies trip to the National Media Museum.

"The Co-operative Film Festival is a non-competitive and not-for-profit youth initiative run by The Co-operative to encourage young people to co-operate, develop creativity and express themselves. It is one of the longest running film festivals in the country and a huge celebration of young people’s creative film-making! It’s been going for a massive 45 years, which means we’ve been showing films made by young people for nearly half a century." [Co-op Film Festival Website]

News Desk: One of the activities around the museum

Similarly to last years Festival, a number of students from our School were having their work screened. The screenings were again impressive and again gave everyone inspiration for it to be their work that is screened there next year. As well as watching the screenings, we also had chance to look around the museum at a wide range of different media related items, practice/use more advanced media equipment and partake in a number of activities such as workshops.

The special guests at the Festival this year were James and Oliver Phelps, famous for playing Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter Film Franchise. A quote from the Co-op film festival website reads:

James and Oliver Phelps

 "This year there'll be two very special guests at the festival - James and Oliver Phelps, who play Fred and George Weasley in the Harry Potter films. Our stars will join budding young movie makers to officially open the event by cutting the ribbon outside the main entrance." [Co-op film festival website]

 For the first hour at the museum, I had not booked any events or activities. This turned out very well as it gave us the chance to look around the museum, watch a number of different programs (around the museum are a number of 'booths' where you can watch selected documentaries about the history of media), read up on different areas of media and have a chance to practice using different equipment such as cameras. 

James and Oliver Phelps as Fred and George Weasley

Having looked around the museum, we were informed of the oppurtunity to attend a Question and Answer session with James and Oliver Phelps, who are known mainly for their roles in the Harry Potter films as Fred and George Weasley. The question and answer session was very interesting and informative, with them talking about life growing up as film stars, to how they saw their futures going. The event gave everyone an insight into the film industry and an idea of what it is all about.

Following this was the screening and a chance to watch some of the work that pupils from our school created over the last year on the big screen. As was the case last year, they were arguably the best productions shown in the screening and it seemed very strange to see the work on the big screen. All in all the screening was a success and I would hope to be returning next year to see our own production been screened there.