Tupton Hall School’s Media Club Win Film of The Month With ‘Entertaining’ and ‘Gripping’ Action-Comedy.

The competition is open to young people aged 5 to 19 across the United Kingdom and aims to celebrate exceptional filmmaking talent.

The national competition regularly receives hundreds of entries and selects a winner each month. Tupton Hall School’s entry; Status Clones 2, has earned the students a £100 Amazon voucher to commend their hard work and talent.

Media Studies subject leader, Chris Welch, commented on the film’s first instalment and students’ excitement to create a sequel. “Our Media club filmed the first Status Clone in 2019 when most of the students were in Year 8. It’s a comic sci-fi take on the 'technology taking over humans' sci-fi narrative and won the Into Film Runner Up prize.”

“When we returned after lockdown, the then Year 10s wanted to make Status Clone 2. Thousands of their ideas followed, enough for about ten films. What we ended up with was a truly surreal follow up playing with time and reality with plenty of nods to famous films...it's not for everybody, but clearly impressed the judges!”

“The students were a joy to work with and it was a real whole school collaboration with staff appearances (thanks to one-take-master, Mr Pateman) and Sixth formers editing and producing the soundtrack.”

Into Film judges were wowed by Status Clones 2, describing the film as “great fun”, “gripping” and “dynamic”. One judge was particularly impressed by the film’s recapping technique, stating; “All tv recaps should be like this!”. The judge continued: “[…] it's clear the team had a really good time making it. I enjoyed the way different genres were merged and they played around with the 4th wall. The injections of humour in the dialogue were great too”.

Another judge commented; “Status Clone 2 is an entertaining action-comedy with plenty of twists and turns. It cleverly flirts with different techniques and uses the silent movie genre well.” They continued; “It's effective use of comedy made laugh out loud, especially with the mock 'paid promotion' of cereal-osly! I thoroughly hope there'll be a third!”

One judge claimed to “love it”, praising the film’s satire. The quote reads: “This is so much fun! I love how they’ve taken the idea of making a sequel, and then gone so big with it, getting meta in the recap, and then using a silent movie style.”

Mr Welch concluded; “I’m absolutely delighted that Into Film chose Status Clones 2 to be their Film of the Month. Will there be a Status Clone 3? That's up to the students!” Mr Welch applauded those involved with the project and commended their hard work: “Consider yourselves Award-winning Film-makers!”