TWO young movie-makers have had their film chosen from more than 270 other productions to be shown at a national film festival. Hinchingbrooke School pupils, James Ballard from Brampton and Thibault Jeangout from Graveley, both 15, filmed a six-minute Bon

TWO young movie-makers have had their film chosen from more than 270 other productions to be shown at a national film festival.

Hinchingbrooke School pupils, James Ballard from Brampton and Thibault Jeangout from Graveley, both 15, filmed a six-minute Bond-style adventure which they have called Operation Red Sand.

It will be shown at Bradford's National Media Museum on Saturday, October 13 as part of the Co-operative Young Film-Makers Festival. The entry was one of 100 chosen for the two-day festival - all by young film-makers, including entries from schools, youth groups, art groups, colleges and video workshops.

James and Thibault did everything themselves, including filming, editing and post production including putting on the sound.

They each acted in the film, one as the hero, a retired M16 agent, and the other as an assailant out to kill him in a revenge attack. Filming was done on land near their homes with fight scenes in garages and they enlisted neighbours' children to act as extras.

Thibault said the hardest part was editing the film down to the required six minutes.

"It was hard finding bits to cut out. We made the film at Easter, we had three days filming and it was 10 days from start to finish, including writing the script and editing."

This is the second year that James has entered a film for the festival. Last year, his three-minute movie A Day Out at Y2SK8, a film about in-line skating at a skate part in Peterborough, was screened.

James had begun skating at 10 and started photographing his friends skating with a video camera he had been bought for Christmas aged 13.

The day before his 14th birthday, he fell while skating on a 12-foot ramp and broke his leg in three places and is still off sport.

However, as he was recovering from surgerylast year, he learned that his first film had been accepted for the festival.

This year, he decided to ask his friend Thibault to help him make a longer film. Neither of them had acted before.

James said: "It took ages to cut it down to six minutes."

The festival, organised by the Co-operative Group, has been going since 1966. The young film-makers will take part in workshops including documentary-making with Channel 4, acting master classes and how to make a television chat show. They will also have the chance to shoot a pop video for singer Laura Groves and meet animator David Bunting who has worked on Disney's Tigger the Movie and Thunderbirds.

INFORMATION: e-mail info@ youngfilm-makers.coop