Orkney goes to Hollywood with talking seals

Published on Saturday 23 August 2008 22:07

THE actors were made of plasticine, the budget was around £5,000, and the studio was located not in Hollywood or Burbank, but in a spare room in a tiny school on Orkney.

But Lights Out!, a five-minute animated film made by children at Sanday Community School, has been snapped up by Sir Richard Branson as entertainment for passengers on Virgin's intercontinental flights, alongside blockbusters such as Iron Man and Prince Caspian.

The movie features a colony of seals who cannot get to sleep at night because of the beam from a nearby lighthouse. Along with their friends, including a seagull, a rabbit and a whale, they plan to "put that light out".

The figures are reminiscent of the work of Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit, with a similarly dry sense of humour that has made the film a hit with adults as well as children.

It was created under the First Light Movies scheme, which provides lottery cash to enable children and teenagers throughout the UK to gain hands-on, practical experience of film-making.

Lights Out! was already an award-winner before Virgin Atlantic picked it up. But the Virgin deal means that the Scottish film has – in a sense – made it all the way to Hollywood, as one of the films on offer on flights to Los Angeles. It is the icing on the cake for the young film-makers, who began work on the project two years ago.

"I like Wallace and Gromit and stuff like that, so when this came up I was very into it," said 14-year-old Joe Cameron. "I helped with the storyline and the model-making and the actual animation.

"It took a long time with the model-making and a few movements every day for the animation." But Cameron believes it was worth the effort. "It's been amazing the response. Everyone has really loved it," he said.

The impetus for the project came from Tony Hull, a part-time IT teacher, and local artist Dominique Cameron, who set up an after-school animation workshop in 2006.

"The project came out of a combination of the kids' ideas and our ideas," said Hull. "We wanted something related to the island we live on, so I thought of the natural world, and the seals came out of that. Also it happened to be the centenary of the lighthouse."

Start Point Lighthouse on Sanday was designed Robert Stevenson – the author's grandfather – and was the first Scottish lighthouse with a revolving light.

Edinburgh-based producer Leslie Hills advised on story structure, character, editing and other practical aspects of film-making. She said:

"They wrote it, they made everything, they composed and recorded the music, and they put the whole thing together. It's a beautiful little piece of work."

Other pupils in the school – which has only 73 pupils – were called in to voice the characters and play the music.

Faye Spiller, Virgin Atlantic's media acquisitions executive, said they were happy to provide a showcase for creativity and new talent.