Video Challenge and Talent Show
Every year Dulwich students and staff look forward to the video challenge with a sense of anticipation and excitement. This provides a great showcase for student’s filming and cinematography skills as well as their script writing, performance and production abilities. The award ceremony was staged in the school gym, which, with the addition of a brilliant stage setup and lighting rig was transformed into a perfect venue for an awards ceremony. This was testament to the hard work poured into the logistics by the video challenge team. Some of the award-winning works can be viewed here.
From inviting teammates and working closely together, from coordinating draft plans to negotiating with sponsors I experienced many surprises and a range of emotions!
This year's video challenge invited Huayi Brothers Media Co., Ltd. to provide prizes. Huayi Brothers is a leading entertainment company that owns a film studio, a television production company, a talent agency, a record label, and a movie theater chain founded in Beijing. This year the entertainment during the award ceremony came in the form of a series of performances from the best acts from the previous talent show. These acts competed against each other and provided a great way of adding interest to the night by interspersing the video challenge awards. This was the very first time that the Talent Show and Video Challenge combined and it worked to great effect to give the evening great pace and energy.
The show started with an exuberant performance from the Milestoneswho completed a short set of songs complete with howling guitar solos and powerful drumming:
The Video Challenge awards then started in earnest with the presentation of the award for best music in a video. Throughout the show the awards were presented by a pairs of Dulwich staff and teachers, who entered into the spirit of the show and provided award presentations with great style and humor.
After this, the second of the talent show acts took the stage by storm with an engaging and exuberant combination of rap and break dancing:
Next was a remarkable talent show ensemble drama piece called Adieu which included a very beautiful, emotionally charged and poignant farewell speech.
Then the award for best teacher support during video challenge was announced. Many Dulwich teachers actively contributed to the videos providing advice and in many cases also contributing their own unique acting skills. When the Talent Show Winners were announced, emotions ran high once again when Adieu were given their award was the overall winners of the talent competition. It was a bitter sweet nostalgic moment as students reflected on the fact that this was the last time they would ever perform together.
The video challenge awards then entered the final stage with the announcement of the Video Challenge Award for Best Actor and Best Actress. The evening reached its climax with the presentation of the award for best Picture. The award presentation was delivered by Campbell Douglas and Stephen Cobb.
The evening as a whole was a phenomenal success, full of emotion and pathos. The event ran as smoothly as possible and played to a packed house. Emotions ran high at times, as is often the case at award ceremonies. Everyone left having experienced something that was both significant and a worthwhile celebration of the student’s talent and creativity. The stuff that memories are made of.
