Thursday, June 9, 2011

Documentary Assignment Turns Into 2011 Miss Hawaii Crown

Think of this as a real-life, upside-down version of 2006 sleeper hit Little Miss Sunshine.

A few years ago, Lauren Kealohilani Cheape was working on her degree in film production at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. As part of her Academy for Creative Media assignments, she was tasked with making a documentary on a subject specific to the islands. Because her roommate had been in the Miss Hawaii pageant, Cheape chose the contest as her focus rather than the more popular topics of hula dancing or surfing.

Ain't that a kick in the tiara...

Cheape explains to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser how it all went down:

There was a pageant a week later, I entered and did a whole backstage documentary, and I completed the last scene and ended up winning the preliminary [pageant] and was thrown into Miss Hawaii two months later.

This past weekend at the Hawaii Convention Center, the 23-year-old Cheape went one better. In her fourth and final yearly try at the title she initially came to only as a documentary maker, she won the whole damn thing. Running as Miss East Oahu, she beat out eleven other contestants and is now Miss Hawaii 2011.

If Cheape is smart, she will find time in the coming year to squeeze in a sequel alongside her more formal beauty queen duties.

No comments:

Post a Comment