Eco-friendly film

Thai team makes a valuable video

By Suwitcha Chaiyong
Photos courtesy Panasonic Thailand

At the Baan Toong Yao model village in Lamphun, villagers live happily by using biogas energy to generate electricity from pig manure. The story of this eco-friendly pig farming village was told in a video called Moon La Kha Ma Ha San (Valuable Sufficiency), made by five students from Montfort College in Chiang Mai.

The video was good enough to impress judges at the Kid Witness News Asia Pacific Regional Awards in Singapore, winning the Grand Prix and Best Videography Award.

“We were really proud of our achievement,” 19-year-old student Natee Arayawutthikul (Ty) said. Ty is a member of the Met Lek Phlik Lok team that made the video.

“It was unexpected because Thai students had never won a regional Grand Prix award before,” Ty said. “The awards encouraged us to create more work.”

PIG PRODUCE

For the competition, competitors could choose to make videos based on the topics of environment or communication.

The Met Lek Phlik Lok team — Worrawat Watakit (Code), 18, Pasin Kraisutarung (Earth), 19, Kunawut Kunanai (Pangpond), 16, Kasideth Kaewpradit (Joey), 19 and Ty — are all from Chiang Mai, so they decided to visit the nearby Baan Toong Yao model village.

“The village is self-sufficient,” Code said. “There are a lot of interesting projects in the village including home-grown vegetables, biogas energy systems and community forestry.”

Ty explained that the team focused on pig farming and how pig manure is used to create biogas energy that can generate electricity for the villagers.

TERRIFIC TEAM

The members of Met Lek Phlik Lok found that they had great teamwork skills as they discussed and worked on every process of making the video together, from creating the script to filming and editing.

“We brainstormed to come up with various ideas and helped one another with every part of the work,” Code said. “The only hard part was filming at a pigsty because it smelled really bad!”

Code said that they managed to make it through because the team loved making the video.

VILLAGE CHARACTER

When asked what make their video stand out from the others in the competition, the guys said that they created a villager character played by team member Pangpond. The story in the video was told by showing Pangpond’s daily life.

“The character we created makes the story easy to understand,” Code said. “As a villager, Pangpond tells viewers about his daily routine and talks about how his work affects the environment.”

Code added that the countryside and village activities featured in the video probably looked intriguing to city people who saw it.

HAPPY LIFE

The team said that they enjoyed living peacefully in a self-sufficient village so much that they might try to live that way in the future.

“We were impressed with the kindness of the villagers,” Ty said. “They always welcomed us, their houses were safe, and everybody helped one another. It seemed like true happiness.”

GLOBAL CONTEST

In mid-October, the Thai team’s winning video will compete with videos from more than 30 different countries around the world for international awards in New York. The Met Lek Phlik Lok team is naturally excited and keeping their fingers crossed.

“This is the first time that a Thai team has made it to this level,” Ty said. “We hope that we can bring home a prize!”

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