OLYMPUS UNDERTAKES CSR PROGRAMME WITH THE ONE ACADEMY
Olympus Malaysia, which recently launched the revolutionary PEN E-P1 camera, teamed up with The One Academy in its search for creative and talented young Malaysians.
The project was titled “Storytellers wanted: Olympus E-P1 photo + videography competition” and it was initiated back in April. There were no rules, just guidelines for students to create a two-minute video clip, using the varied features found in the revolutionary PEN E-P1 digital camera.
Open only to students of One Academy, each team was randomly assigned to a selected theme on life, family, feminine or art. The contest received a strong response with 28 groups comprising of a total of 84 students sending in their compositions.
One of the key features of this new Olympus PEN E-P1 is the high-definition/HD movie recording with stereo sound recording. This project saw this feature being explored and used for creative input.
On September 29, the prize presentation was held at Marmalade Café in Plaza Mont Kiara for the three winning teams. Present were Mr Tan Tick Boon, the Managing Director of Olympus Malaysia and Ms Veronica Ho, CEO & Dean of The One Academy. The event was also graced by the five consolation teams together with lecturers and family members.
A big bonus for the participating students is that Olympus Malaysia set aside 28 units of this new model for testing before it was even released into the Malaysian market. Thus, the students at The One Academy were privileged to be the first batch of users to explore the new Micro Four-Thirds System.
For Olympus, the benefit was being able to work with the students and their lecturers, as the college is known as a centre of creativity. Through a revolutionary product which Olympus is very proud of, the students’ work will now be used as choice contents wherever Olympus Malaysia features this camera.
Olympus specifically chose to work with students and not professionals within the creative industry because it wanted to undertake a corporate social responsibility project with a group that had fresh ideas as the zest of the young generation is often untapped.
As the winning teams have shown, there is so much creativity amongst the youth and there are many issues that they have tapped into, such as the significance of Asian Values and the importance of communications via different aspects.
This really showcases that the younger generation and their views must be heard and taken seriously for there are so many things and topics that affect them but adults may see them as trivial or unimportant, at times.
The grand prize-winning team received three units of the Olympus PEN E-P1 worth RM2,999 each and three Olympus gift vouchers worth RM400 each while the second and third place winners received different camera models.
There was also a category voted for by the students: the public’s choice special award, whereby the winning team is based on the highest online votes. For this special category, the winning team were given three units of the Olympus WS550M digital voice recorder.