Year 9 Oscar's Award Ceremony

By Bethany Lam

After months of hard work, Year 9 finally has award-winning stop-motion movies to show and beautifully written memoirs to present. On February 10th, an award ceremony presented the best stop-motion movie and the best-written memoir. If you missed the ceremony, don’t worry, because this article will cover everything: the who, the what, and the how.

The Oscars have happened before over the years, but this year Ms Lewis, an English teacher, wanted to make it “... like an extravaganza”.

She said, “English teachers and Design teachers came together… and we judged it by a criterion and what it looked like in general.”

Before the ceremony, the students were filled with nerves and excitement. This was evident: “I was feeling nervous but excited to see who was getting an Oscar,” commented Ali Hayes, a Year 9 student. This was echoed as Amirah Datwani was “... feeling nervous because I think I have a good chance to win but I would have to say a speech in front of a lot of people…”.

The anticipation hovered everywhere throughout the whole week, and as lunch went on, the students and teachers prepared for the Oscars.

The Oscars began with some beautiful but quiet music played by Ethan Huang and Caleb Wong. The winners of the best-written memoir in each class were announced, and everyone loyally clapped for their friends. Not every memoir was a story, some was in the form of a song. But all of the memoirs that were read or nominated held great memories.

After a singing performance by Stephen Donahue, the time students had all been waiting for finally arrived. 3 nominees were announced from each class, but only 1 could win an Oscar. Everyone clapped as winners gave their acceptance speech, thanking all who supported them.

With the Oscars coming to an end, the song “Yellow” was sung and played by a Y9 band.

Teachers are exceptionally proud of the students, as they each support all their friends even if they didn’t win. “I don’t think I would win… though my classmate did really well so I’m astonished to see the results!” said Princeton Chiu, another Y9 student.

When winning, Cheryl Leung stated “it was extraordinary and honestly surprising. Of course I was really happy to have received the award…” It must be very satisfying to the English and Design department that there was a lot of positive energy. “...it was a great experience and I really enjoyed it,” finished Cheryl.

However, there was some criticism. A lot of people thought the judging was a little unfair and perhaps should be improved. “... most of the winners are reasonable judging from the person’s [memoir], but a lot of awards in Design were not. Since we were able to watch the winning stop motions… I feel like a lot of them are biased and I have seen many other stop-motion animations that are better than the winners.” When asked for improvements, this was stated: “... I think next year, instead of having one winner per class it could be one winner per category such as ‘smoothest animation’ or ‘best storyline’”. This student wishes to be anonymous.

A friend of hers added, “We watched the videos in my class so I am so confused how [that person] won instead of [that person].” She wishes to be anonymous too.

When told that there were some complaints, Ms Lewis replies that “... we thought about voting… we have other students looking over it, not [Y9’s].” Hopefully there will be a fairer judging next time. “We also have an award for everything; the memoir, stop-motion, and movie poster. Like a grand prize and it’ll be done in April.” Ms Lewis said.

Overall, the Oscars were, once again, a success. The idea of combining English with Design allowed all students to realise that there were many ways in which they can express themselves. So, it was great to see so many different interpretations of memoirs being shown throughout the Oscars. For those going into year 9 next year, start thinking about those moments in your life that you think are memorable, and then start planning on how you want it to look on screen because, who knows, your movie might just win you an Oscar.