A group of teenagers have brought a touch of Hollywood to Halton thanks to a project centred around mini-motos, funded by the Area Forum and members of the Safer Halton Partnership.

The youths, who are all from the Hough Green area of Widnes, starred in and produced their own short films to warn others of the dangers of riding the motorbikes anti-socially.

And on Friday the three films – an animation, live action and mixture of both – were unveiled at a special premiere at Ditton Community Centre. 

With editing completed, the films will be transferred to DVD and will now be used to highlight the issues surrounding mini-motos and off-road bikes to other youths in the borough.  

Inspector Simon Blackwell, of the Safer Halton Partnership, said:  “Everyone involved in the project was very impressed with the creativity of the young people involved.  We hope the DVDs send out powerful messages to their peer group – and to a wider audience.  We would like the DVDs to be used in local schools and we will also be showing them at public events.”

Local PCSOs were also featured in the DVDs, which were produced by eight teenagers with the assistance of Enormous Films.

Chantal Dickinson, 15, said:  “I really enjoyed the week working with the film company as I learned a lot of skills, like using the animator and different cameras.

“I particularly enjoyed the acting part of the project.  I think that this is a really good idea to let people know how annoying these off road motorbikes are to the people living close by and how dangerous they can be - they look silly too.”   Roanne Wood, also 15, added:  “This project was really good for me as I am interested in doing music and media when I leave school so it helped me to see different ways of editing, using sounds and music and animation.

“I don’t really understand why people ride the bikes around the street anyway.  They are noisy and dangerous and the people who ride them look ridiculous - hopefully these short films will show this.”