FOUR Kendal College film students are celebrating after they each picked up a gold medal at a prestigious competition.

They created an emotional film that won them top awards and accolades in the Video Moving Image event at Worldskills held at the Birmingham NEC.

Judges were moved to tears by the four-minute film created by film and video production students James Nattrass, 18, from Carnforth, Nathan High, 20, from Greenodd, Will Smyth, 18, from Ulverston and Bethany Wilson, 19, from Kendal.

Worldskills organisers described the clip about vocational learning as “awesome” and “stunning.”

The film students have been competing in different stages of the competition since May.

In the first stage they had to create a storyboard and other planning documents, and this won them a place in the next round.

For the semi-finals in Hinckley, they had to create a six-second 'sting' for a horror channel, and pitch their ideas to a panel of industry judges, with the students sailing through to the Skills Show at the NEC.

Here the brief was to create a film to promote vocational learning to 14-16-year-olds and the students had just three days to film, edit and complete their work, which was then judged by WorldSkills officials.

“It was difficult because we had such a short amount of time,” explained Nathan, “but we prepared well enough beforehand and we had a very good shot list that we refined every day.”

They filmed on location in the NEC and, as a team, wrote an inspirational poem to be read over the footage.

It was then shown to an audience of more than 700.

Beth said: “We wanted to make an unconventional inspirational film because we weren’t inspired by interviews at that age, and we wanted to make something that would really hit home for everybody, not just 14-16-year-olds.”

“To see people crying when it was shown on the big screen was just amazing – you can’t really ask for better than that.”

Their film was so well received that the National Apprenticeship Service has asked if they can use it in their own promotional materials James said: “Words can’t explain it, it was probably the best day of my life.”

Kendal College tutors who mentored the students throughout the competition were film lecturer Simon Sylvester, audio lecturer Paul Satterthwaite, digital media lecturer Dan Hodge and film lecturer Ben Barden.

“To see them set the bar so high and become industry professionals is amazing," said Mr Hodge.

In the Health and Social Care Worldskills event, Kendal College student Pauline Coulthard won a silver medal.