Arbroath pupils’ alien animation film award is out of this world

Primary children’s effort showed humour, was very professional and ‘technically brilliant’, say judges

Pupils from an Arbroath primary school are over the moon after their alien film won a national award.

The short film about two pupils meeting an alien on another planet came out on top following judging by a panel of industry leaders including Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Sara Bennett and Episodes actor Stephen Mangan.

The Timmergreens Primary pupils joined the likes of James Bond star Daniel Craig on the red carpet at the famous Odeon Leicester Square for the Into Film Awards yesterday which were hosted by Fife DJ Edith Bowman.

Tim and Sky’s Adventure was made by the primary seven pupils under the guidance of professional animator Andrew Low as part of a British Film Institute funded initiative.

In the two-minute stop motion film two pupils accidentally launch their school’s experimental space rocket and find themselves on a mysterious planet.

Depute head Jill Cassidy said the school was overwhelmed to have won and described it as “such an amazing experience”.

Judge Lisa Prime said the narrative was extremely strong and the film was “technically brilliant”.

She said there was a good mix of claymation, animation and stopframe while she gave particular praise to the production design.

She said the film injected humour and felt very professional while still retaining the authenticity of being made by primary six pupils.

In the colourful film the school’s spaceship is able to launch by mixing sweets and cola. It accidentally blasts off after a misplaced kick of a football releases the cola into the engine.

It crashes on a distant planet, damaging the hold which contains the sweets.

A scary looking alien appears, but all he is interested in is eating the sweets.

The film’s message was you can’t judge people by their looks.

The children worked in teams to plan and create the plot, setting, characters, scenery and the script.

They used a range of technology to create their animation and were inspired by Tim Peake who watched last year’s entries while on board the International Space Station.

Unfortunately not all of the children were able to go to the awards in London so pupils were chosen by a lottery.

Picture: Paul Reid. James Booth and Cara Gibson with some of the “stars”.