Press release from Atom Awards:
Lithgow High School recently picked up an Enhance TV ATOM Award for best Middle School Video Production at a gala awards night in Melbourne on October the 23rd.
“It was a fantastic night and a great honour to be nominated in four categories in the awards. This is our first year entering so we were very excited at the recognition we received. The winning of an award made it even more special” said Lithgow High School Visual Arts teacher Sean O’Keeffe who represented the team at the awards.
Lithgow High School continues to carve a niche for itself in the area of specialised public education with four nominations in the Enhance TV ATOM Awards. The ATOM (the Australian Teachers of Media) recognises and celebrates the excellence displayed by Australian and New Zealand productions for the screen.
The annual ATOM Awards recognise excellence in over thirty categories of Film, Television, Animation and Multimedia (including video games) and celebrate the very best of Australian and New Zealand screen production.
The competition was open to anyone who had produced a short film, documentary, animation, electronic game, educational resource, television program or innovative new media work in the past twelve months.
Lithgow was nominated in three secondary school film categories and was also nominated for a teaching award.
“It’s a tremendous privilege to be nominated for such a prestigious award and past experience has shown that the standard is always high. Our students have worked very hard to produce some films of real quality and merit and we are really proud of what they have achieved” says Visual Arts Teacher Sean O’Keeffe.
The films in contention were all produced by stage 5 Visual arts and Film making students currently at Lithgow High School.
One film, a music video was produced to highlight the effects of bullying in schools and features a soundtrack by the renowned pop star Kate Miller Heidke. The clip was produced as part of the MySpace/ Sony “Caught in the Crowd” video competition and the video featured on YouTube where it ended up in the Top twenty and was the fifth most discussed video in Australia for a week.
The students involved are not resting on their laurels and have recently won $11,000 dollars in prizes and four awards at the Panasonic KWN awards for a documentary for a documentary on Wind Farming. Titled “Wind Girl it won both state and national titles in the secondary category as well as two craft awards for sound and videography.
“Wind Girl” also won best Junior Non Fiction at this years Robyn Anderson Awards.
The second winning Film Mercury Vapour has won swag of awards ranging from the directors choice award at the Newtown Film Festival to three awards including the overall award at the prestigious Robin Anderson Film Awards. It has screened in festivals nationally.
Student film production at Lithgow has seen students produce work for SBS television and public service announcements for national television. One student recently produced a music video for the musician Josh Pike which is regularly screened on the ABC’s Rage program.
Lithgow also played a significant role in the production of another ATOM nominee, the Art Gallery of NSW, nominated for its multimedia learning resource of Inside Artexpress09.
They were involved in the filming and interviewing of a number of artists and authorities including a “scoop” interview with Edmund Capon, director of the Art Gallery of NSW. The interviews are screened as vodcasts on the AGNSW web site.
All up Lithgow High School has won over $ 18,000 in prizes in the last 12 months.
“The ATOM Awards are designed to award productions that are created for the screen – be it the cinema screen, television, PC, games console or even mobile phone screen and our judges were not disappointed with what they saw this year,” Mrs Nelson advised.
The 2009 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards will be presented at a gala presentation ceremony, held in the Plaza Ballroom, Regent Theatre, Melbourne on Friday 23 October, 2009.
The 2009 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards program is sponsored by Madman, QANTM College, Monash University, Deakin University, Encore Magazine, Celtx and is supported by SBS Independent, Open Channel, Qpix, MetroScreen, Wide Angle and Netagi.
The 2009 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards are funded by Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation, the New South Wales Film and Television Office and Film Victoria.
For more information about the 2009 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards please visit www.atomawards.org