School shoots slick film as alternative to Nativity show

NATIVITY plays are usually performed in a draughty hall to a host of adoring, camera-toting parents.

But one East Lothian school has taken the heart-warming seasonal offering to a whole new level – by filming a slick mini Nativity film on location, incorporating well-known landmarks and co-operation from delighted townsfolk.

The video by Dunbar Primary pupils has been viewed more than 1500 times since it was posted on social media website YouTube a week ago. It premiered at a special screening in Dunbar Parish Church on Tuesday to a standing 
ovation.

• Watch the video here

Primary five students were cast in the roles of Mary, Joseph and their donkey, along with the three Wise Men and a host of shepherds, as part of the six-minute film shot last month.

Mary, played by nine-year-old Caitlin Craig, is visited by an angel while doing her washing in Dunbar’s Countess Launderette in the opening scenes of the film, dubbed A Scottish Christmas Tale.

Local haunts such as the Rossborough, Royal Mackintosh and The Rocks hotels also play starring roles as the string of inns that turn the parents of Jesus away.

Each of the involved venues appear in the credits and have been sent a copy of the video as thanks.

School depute head Heather Hackett said the idea of the Scottish retelling had sprung from students producing her their own interpretation of the Nativity story.

She said: “We took so many children from each class and got them to tell me the Christmas story and I wrote it as they told me. We set up a running order of how to do it and then we cast it. There were children from every class – the stars of the show, shall we say.

“In schools we always do a Nativity. It’s usually the infants, but we decided we wanted to do something for the church service. Rather than the children perform on the day and then you’ve got the stress of rehearsals and you’ve got the stress of if they forget their words or if somebody’s ill, we thought it’d be better if we did it as a film and then we just sit and watch it.”

All 120 students from the school’s four primary five classes appear at some point in the film, which was shot over just three days.

Students Lewis Bell, nine, and Molly Hardie, eight, were cast in the roles of Joseph and the donkey. Lewis said; “It was really good.”