(Petaling Jaya, 9 Sept) - Over 100 aspiring young filmmakers crowded IACT College campus together with their school teachers for the Grand Finale of #MySekolah Short Film Competition. Of over 130 entries, only 14 shortfilms were shortlisted for 2nd Runner-up (Up to RM48,000 worth of Scholarships with IACT College for the winners and also RM300 for the winning school); 1st Runner-up (Up to RM72,000 worth of Scholarships with IACT College for the winners and also RM700 for the winning school) and Grand Prize (Up to RM120,000 worth of Scholarships with IACT College for the winners and also RM1,000 for the winning school).

As the saying goes, “the best thing in school is not your score, but your memories”. #MySekolah is a national level shortfilm competition that showcased unique campus culture in each school organized by IACT College, the Creative Communication Specialist, in partnership with Study Hub Asia. The competition reached, inspired and empowered about 850 students over 180 schools nationwide to participate.

The organizing chairman, Mr. Shyamachandran from IACT College says, “We’ve always believed that every school has their distinctive culture, and students being so creative in many ways, combining the two together, we see the birth of interesting shortfilms that document collective memory of their school. We had so many different types of videos, some were narrative, some were funny, and some were filled with historical information. For students aged 16 and above, it is amazing to see the talent and sheer enjoyment shown in creating their videos for all to watch.

As part of the efforts in grooming young filmmakers, IACT College also held a Video Production Clinic on 15th and 23rd of July for over 250 #MySekolah participants from different parts of Malaysia and trained them on ideation, creative execution and basic filmmaking techniques. The clinic was run by industry expert lecturers from mass communication and broadcasting industry. 

After the production clinic, contestants were given 1 month to put their ideas to work. The finished short films were then uploaded onto mysekolah.my for voting. On #MySekolah social media engagement, overall posting outreached to more than 368,000 people via Facebook with overall video count watched 130,000 during the weeks of voting. The #MySekolah website garnered around 90,000 visits and 40,000 votes casted during the two weeks of voting for the short films. Besides getting popularity votes from the netizens, all videos were also judged by industry experts from IACT College base on creativity, storyline and production value. 

The following are the winners for the esteemed competition 

1. Champion: St John Institution (Gagak V)
2. 1st Runner Up: Chung Hua Middle School No. 1 (Milo Laksa)
3. 2nd Runner Up: SMK Darul Ehsan (Asterius)