Student videos call for a "wise up" on binge drinking

A film comparing speedy drinkers to runners who race ahead of others but eventually collapse has won a pair of prizes for students of Institute of Technology Tralee.

Fri, 26 Apr, 2013 - 01:00

Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

The film, The Pace Setter, was written and directed by Nicky O’Donnell from Limerick City and Peter O’Callaghan, Kanturk, Co Cork, was director of photography.

The 90-second video won the overall best film and people’s choice awards at the drink2baware.ie competition for third-level students, earning them €1,500 in each category.

As well as fourth-year interactive multimedia student Nicky and first-year TV and radio student Peter, the team who travelled to collect the awards in Dublin included three others.

David Lyons from Listowel, Co Kerry, and a classmate of Nicky’s, played the lead role in the short film. Ger Roche and Jane Callahan, both second-year TV and radio students from Tralee, were the other production team members.

College students were invited by drinkaware.ie, the drinks-industry programme aimed at promoting responsible drinking, to submit films on the theme of pacing our drinking.

In The Pace Setter, David Lyons’ character is seen taking on three other joggers but running out of steam eventually and collapsing outside a bar. The film ends with a shot of him inside the pub, almost passed out in front of a table full of empty glasses.

Fionnuala Sheehan, drinkaware.ie chief executive, said adult consumption of alcohol has dropped by one-fifth in a decade and we drink less often than other Europeans, but we drink more and faster when we do.

Students from Limerick IT got the silver award and a €1,000 prize for Game Over, a video-game style film.

There were joint bronze awards for teams from Limerick IT and Dublin Institute of Technology for their films What’s the Rush, and On/Off the Pitch.

The competition and the event was a chance for aspiring filmmakers to showcase their work, but also to make contacts and source information that may be useful in their future careers.

A group of IT Tralee music technology students found their work being viewed by more than half a million people on YouTube in January, after film director, Quentin Tarantino, endorsed their overdubbing of a scene from his Pulp Fiction movie with Kerry accents.