'Why you coral me'

For the Shuqun Primary School team of Pri 6 pupils Ben Wei Feng, Cheng Si Min and Mervin Tng, their one-minute video advertisement was a chance to showcase their video-making skills - and their wit too. The video, Go English: Speak Well To Be Understood, "could teach us to speak properly and laugh at ourselves at the same time," says Ben.

The award-winning team from Shuqun Primary School worked on every step of the production themselves.

The use of 'coral' mentioned above actually refers to 'quarrel', a word often mispronounced by Singaporeans. The video highlights and corrects this, as well as other common English errors in Singapore. As Mervin explains, "We see things differently from adults," giving the pupils a fresh perspective for their video, which took home a gold award in the video advertisement category for primary schools.

Under the guidance of their teacher-facilitator Ms Rozainah Rahim, the pupils took on the entire task of scriptwriting, video recording, acting and video editing. Mervin estimates they spent eight hours producing the short one-minute feature.

This isn't their first time they've dabbled in media production. Ben, for example, started getting interested in digital media when he was in Pri 2. The team members are also active members of a CCA called Media Production House, where students are encouraged to pursue their interests in media. The school even has a podcasting studio specially built for the CCA.

For Si Min, she takes inspiration from no less an icon than Bill Gates. "I remembered reading that he was one of the Top 100 influential people in media," she says. "We've always been told to have our dreams. This video is my way of starting small to do that."

Not just hot air

A 'small' video also enabled the team from Nanyang Girls' High School to scoop the platinum award in the video advertisement category for secondary schools. As Sec 3 student Kok Hiu Tung recalls, when the results were announced, "My first thoughts were, 'Are you kidding?' I couldn't believe we'd won the platinum award."

The platinum award is the highest honour at the School Digital Media Awards, surpassing the gold award. The Nanyang Girls' High School team was one of two student teams that received the award this year. Their video, Save the Earth, focuses on the effect of greenhouse gases.

Hiu Tung, along with Sec 3 students Lydia Fok Jia Ling and Ng Chyi Huey, spent two weeks brainstorming for ideas. It took them a while to figure out how to represent the invisible greenhouse gases - until they locked on the idea of using balloons. Then it took two days to shoot the balloons against a green screen in the school's video broadcasting studio.

The team from Nanyang Girls' High School team produced a video about the greenhouse effect.

The rest of the production took five days. Editing the video in high-definition format was the most challenging issue, as the computers in school had difficulties handling the memory-intensive process. "During the production process, I felt tired and sometimes even had the thought of giving up," Hiu Tung admits. "But when my group reviewed the final video, I felt really proud of it."

Thanks to the encouragement from their teacher-facilitator Mr Chiu Wee Meng, the students managed to overcome all the difficulties along the way. Of course, it helped to have a strong interest in media. Lydia and Hiu Tung have been involved in many media-related activities in school, while Chyi Huey's interest began even earlier.

"It's probably a result of my dad's fascination with photography and Adobe Photoshop when I was in primary school," explains Chyi Huey. "That was how I first learnt to use Photoshop and the rest just followed naturally." Next up, she's looking at not only next year's School Digital Media Awards, but also other competitions involving Flash animation.