Rubbish Film Festival

By Sophie Malone, TY 

On the 20th and the 21st of October, 12 Transition Year students from Athboy Community School volunteered to take part in the Rubbish Film Festival, an event where students from different schools from all across the country each create a one minute short film about an environmental issue to inspire action to be taken. The Rubbish Film festival is also partnered with SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) which encourages students to help work together to create a more sustainable future. 

The 12 students were taken to the lecture room in the school where they were introduced to James, their instructor, the person who would be helping them create their film. During the first part of the workshop the students did icebreakers and were given a full rundown on what they would be doing, the different awards they could win, and how to film shots and camera perspectives. 

During the first day of the workshop the group discussed the topic they wanted to focus on, the impact AI has on our fresh water sources due to the data centres needed to run the AI models. The students planned out a storyboard along with a basic direction for their film to go in, as well as giving everyone roles for the making of the film, like the director (Sophie Malone), the camera operators (Padraig Englishby, Isabelle O’Rourke) and the editors (Michalina Rozycka, Ruth Coffey). 

During the second day, the group scouted locations around the school to record the different scenes in the film, using tablets given by James and switching between handheld cameras and a tri-pod.  

In between some scenes, the editors cut and put together different takes to make the scenes coherent with each other, and another group worked on promotional tiktoks (Isabelle O’Rourke, Zuzanna Lotach, Isobel Canty) and Kayleigh Farrell made a promotional poster. Everyone involved put a lot of effort into the production of the film, so let’s hope the work ends up paying off!