Southridge Secondary students have wrapped up the top awards in their category in a B.C. student safety video contest.
Media Arts 9 students Harkaran Dial and Riley Chang will accept first and second place prizes in the Grade 8-10 category of the 11th AnnuakWorkSafeBC Student Safety Video Contest in a special awards ceremony Monday (May 30) at the school.
Dial was director of first place winner Extreme Consequences, and Chang was director of runner-up The Flagger, both well-shot, sharply edited two-minute videos humourously underlining the impact of impairment in the workplace, this year’s assigned theme.
The first prize includes $500 to be divided among the team and $2000 to the school, while the second prize includes $500 to the student and $1500 to the school.
“It’s a project we do every year with the Grade 9 students,” said teacher Chris Westendorf, who added the producers had four weeks to develop, script, shoot and edit the spots.
The Southridge submissions were among 55 from high schools across B.C.
Entries were judged based on impact, transferable safety message, original creative concept and technical execution.
Judges were also looking at how well they delivered a youth perspective and how well it targeted young workers and their peers.
Extreme Consequences was co-produced by Dial, Jason Kitikul and Malcolm Beaton. It includes impressive animation (by Beaton) as well as live action, takes place in the missile silo of a mythical nation, where a dozing worker inadvertantly hits the red button launching a strike against a neighbouring country – triggering an inevitable response.
“The boys got a number of their friends to appear in it, went to the school’s drama studio and shot a lot there,” Westendorf said. “They worked real hard and were pretty pleased to get recognized like this, as the videos are actually used to help young workers.”
In the live-action The Flagger – directed and produced entirely by Chang – a flag-person, played by fellow student McKenna Gill, suffers from extreme fatigue from overusing her computer and dozes off while holding a red flag to oncoming vehicles, resulting in a lengthy traffic jam.
“She did this all by herself and rounded up all her neighbours to appear in it – I was pretty impressed,” Westendorf said.
