Christmas Cheer for Weedbusters Film Challenge Winners
Lily McDowall and Lily Ganaha, this year’s Weedbusters 2-minute Film Challenge winners
Lily McDowall and Lily Ganaha from St John’s Girls School, Invercargill, are the winners of the 2015 Weedbusters 2-minute Film Challenge with ‘NZ Hero’.
National Weedbusters coordinator Carolyn Lewis says that ‘NZ Hero’ uses animation to tell a clear story about how weedy exotic species that have found their way to New Zealand can become a threat to our native plants.
“The Weedbusters 2-minute Film Challenge is about raising awareness about invasive weeds and the damage they can cause in our natural areas,’ says Carolyn.
“It’s a chance for students to get a bit creative about how they tell the story of weeds in their local areas or in New Zealand as a whole.”
Previous film challenge entries have used everything from claymation and cartoons to songs and poetry to get the message about weedy species across to viewers. Some have used plays, while others have been in the form of a documentary or a TV news item.
Teacher Sharon Taylor is delighted that NZ Hero won the challenge, and that taking part in creating these short films has changed the way she and her students look at what they see around them.
“Our investigation starter with an exploration of the invasive nature of weeds in a local area of native bush, which really opened our eyes to the problem of environmental weeds” says Sharon.
“By the time the students started working on their storyboards to produce their film challenge entries, they were able to recognise many invasive plants in the bush, and were talking about the weed problem to family and friends.”
“We had great fun creating our film clips, not only learning how we can help our environment, but also how to communicate effectively through film”, says Sharon.
The Weedbusters 2-minute Film Challenge is open to students in years 1-8, and there is a $1000 prize for the winning entry. Find out more here.