Hi All,

Just a reminder about the Christmas Academy Awards. Please see below:

For some added fun we thought we would have our own “Academy Awards” for the greatest scenes in movies. This will be an optional event later in the evening for whoever can stay and would like to participate. Participants will nominate scenes for the various categories then everyone will vote for the scenes they like the best. We are not putting any restrictions on the scenes, so you might want to keep in mind that some scenes may not be suitable for children.

The following is the list of categories:

1.        Favourite Music Scene (singing/dancing in the scene, song being played in the scene, background song, etc.)

2.        Favourite Action Scene

3.        Favourite Quirky/Funny Scene

4.        Favourite Christmas Scene

 Other than the Christmas Scene category, scenes should be taken from feature length films. For the Christmas category, you can take scenes from any length Christmas themed show, or any show that references Christmas.

 Preparing Your Clips

You may enter only one clip per category. You choose how many categories you wish to enter; put a clip in for all the categories, only one category, or none at all. It’s up to you how much you would like to participate. The clip must be a reasonable length; please keep it to under a couple minutes if possible. Our idea is to get your personal favourites for each category.

Note: Please follow these hints to ensure that we can play your clips:

·          Bring all the clips on a memory stick or burn it on a dvd/cd. Name each clip with the following naming convention; category ##.ext (for example, music##.wmv – use any random two digit number). This keeps the clip a surprise to everyone. You can download clips from Youtube or you can use a video editor to extract the scene from a dvd. If you need help obtaining any clips, just let us know and we can hopefully help you (sooner is better).

·          We will be using windows media player so please ensure that the clip plays on it.

·          Ensure that the video resolution is at least 640 x 480 (we will play the clips on a 46” TV).

The Big Night

We will assemble to watch the nominated clips. There will be some lucky person who will be tasked to keep a list of the clips (this is necessary as it will help in the voting afterwards). After all of the clips have been played within a category, each participant will rank them and we will declare a winner – of course you can vote for your own clip and ties remain ties (unless public opinion want a re-vote of the tied clips)

Winners will be applauded, smiled at, harassed, cajoled and generally derided – but you will have won bragging rights for the best clip for that category. Hopefully there will be a piece of bread crumbs or maybe even some fudge for the winners.


We don't have email addresses for any of Heather's family so if anyone can pass this along, that would be great.


Mike & Rhonda