Young film maker wins national title

STUART PIKE

AWOULD-BE film maker, who already has a hugely popular YouTube channel, has won a national competition for a video on climate change.

Sian Morton was encouraged to enter the competition to create a short film by her science teacher Emma Trivett after an eye-opening trip to Iceland.

Sian, 16, wrote a script and went through archive footage that she already had and put the film together from that.

She said: “I researched climate change and what it means to me. It is a very serious subject and it took me a while to find out all about it and I linked it to a film I had made on a trip to Iceland this summer.”

Sian’s YouTube channel Sianxy has 21,000 subscribers and offers viewers her quirky take on life with regular new videos. She has a second vlogging channel on YouTube More Sianxy, where the climate change video has been posted.

While in Iceland she filmed a glacier that was a fraction of the size it used to be as a direct result of climate change.

After being invited to the Manchester Science Festival as a VIP where the film was going to be shown, they were in for a shock when Sian’s film was announced as the winner of the Young Peo- ple Short Film competition, and was shown alongside Adam Chodsko’s Deep Above.

After doing her GCSEs, Sian, who is head girl at Whitworth High, is planning to study A levels at Rochdale Sixth Form in media, film, music and music technology.

She said: “I did want to go into film making before but this has inspired me to do it even more.”

Film maker Adam, who created the film Deep Above about climate change, had selected her film as the competition winner.

He said: “Sian’s film is outstanding: her personal take on climate change and incredible footage that she recorded herself resulted in a film that gave an honest and relatable perspective on climate change. Her use of title sequences, and attention to detail were also exceptional and led to her winning the opportunity of having her work screened to 100 people as part of one of the leading events for Manchester Science Festival. I wish her the very best and encourage her to continue creating, making, and filming. We need more filmmakers like her.”

To view the film go to You Tube and search ‘Climate Change Film moresianxy’. ●» Sian Morton