THERE were great celebrations in St.Joseph’s NS Ballyheigue on Thursday when representatives from Trend Micro Ireland came to announce that Miss Donegan’s class were this year’s overall winners in the ‘What’s Your Story ‘ annual film competition, collecting a prize of €2,000.

Parents and students gathered to congratulate the winners and mark this wonderful achievement. TrendMicro, a leading Cyber Security firm, pose a question to Primary/ Secondary and youth groups on an annual basis and the challenge is to answer this question in a two minute film.

This year’s question was ‘How Might New Technology (or AI) Help You In The Future?’ The children of Miss Donegan’s class brainstormed for a number of weeks before putting their ideas to paper in Storyboard form.

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The children scripted, rehearsed, acted, procured costumes and with the help of Miss Blake (SNA) and Miss Donegan, the hair and make-up department was of extremely high standard.

Under the watchful eyes of Lily Mai Cashman and Michaela Lynch as Directors every shot was filmed with precision on various locations in Ballyheigue.

A number of people from the school community gave of their time and expertise to help bring the children’s vision to fruition.

The story tells of a young boy (played by Patrick Flahive) who tries to answer the question on Future Technology  with the help of his Granda (played by Jamie O’Brien).

Granda gives trusted advice and explains how technology can benefit us all. Unfortunately for Granda and Grandma (played by Lily Mai Cashman), Granda teleports them into the future  and it is up to the young boy to try and rescue them. (Click here to see the short film).

The judges highly commended the wonderful creativity and attention to detail down to the costumes. They said a strong message backed up by a well scripted story gave the film a worthy start, middle and end, where judges were left smiling.

The school is no stranger to success in the competition and last year won the Primary section of the competition. In fact, this is the school’s third time being named as overall winners having won in 2019 and 2016. St. Joseph’s N.S. has a long history in film making and hopes to continue with this important part of the childrens’ learning into the future.

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