"There’s a panther in the school!"

Once in a blue moon, on the news, you’ll hear a story about a “big cat” (such as a tiger or panther) being spotted on the loose in the countryside somewhere. So how does an animal like that make its way into our country? Often it was illegally imported as a young cub by a foolish family who wanted an exotic pet. Unfortunately such people don’t have the foresight to consider how they’ll cope when the cute little furball grows up into a fierce predator. So, to avoid the authorities, they let it loose into the wild. But what if the beast wanders out of the countryside and into your town? What if it wanders into your school?

Over the course of 2005/06, the Clounagh Junior High School’s Year 9 Filmmaking Club met each Wednesday afternoon to produce a movie about the scenario described above. The film’s running time ended up being 18-minutes - twice as long as any previous school film.

This morning, the film received a hearty round of applause from all of Year 8, who watched it during assembly. Congratulations to the members of the Filmmaking Club 2005/06: Adam Gordon, Andrew White, Sam Cheung, Andrew Taylor, Eddie Quin, and Arran Stanley, James Knight and Adam Chambers.

I now present Cat Trap online for your enjoyment …

Chapter 1 of 2:

Chapter 2 of 2:

This entry was posted on June 27, 2006 at 9:04 am and is filed under Film Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “"There’s a panther in the school!"”

  1. ali Says:
    June 27, 2006 at 4:38 pm

    Excellent. Well done Darryl, well done film club and well done Felix ;-) Super film!

  2. Darryl Sloan Says:
    June 28, 2006 at 10:31 am

    Thanks, Ali!

  3. James Maxon Says:
    August 12, 2006 at 3:58 pm

    I must agree, well done! Good camera angles, progression of plot, humor and everything else. I was quite entertained. The cat was a good twist - though I think the meat trail realistically would not have worked. The cat would probably grab the first piece of meat and take off to it eat it rather than following the trail. But the idea was good all the same. I also liked the cat eye in the camera to denote what it sees, quite creative! I just want to know, where did the rope come from? That wasn’t really cut from the gym was it ;-)

  4. Darryl Sloan Says:
    August 12, 2006 at 4:15 pm

    Thanks for the kind words, Jim. Glad you liked the movie. If you’re interested, there are three more Film Club movies available here.

    The rope in question was the tug-of-war rope kept in the PE store. We threw it up over one of the gymnasium beams and let it dangle. Thankfully, we didn’t have to cut it, either; young Arran is craftily holding both ends of it together.

    When we first thought up the scene, we had no clear idea of how to make it work. But there’s always a way.

  5. James Maxon Says:
    August 15, 2006 at 3:59 pm

    I saw “School’s out” from your link in The Tripods group, but I didn’t see the others. Thanks for the link I’ll check them out.

    Yeah, I could tell it wasn’t really cut at that moment, but it looked good all the same :-)

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