St Kilda 2011 - Industry Day Seminars

This was DEFINITELY the most inspiring day of the festival so far. For those of you who don't know, the SKFF Industry Day is filled with seminars and lectures on various topics from film funding to film making and also provides an opportunity for the various film groups around Australia to open up shop and talk about their organizations. Some of the people involved included the Australian Writers Guild, Australian Directors Guild, my own university, RMIT, and the VCA. The stalls are set up for people to come and ask questions about the various organizations, there role within the industry, and how they can join. Last year, I realize now I definitely did not take enough advantage of this day. These organizations are here specifically for you and for you to speak with them about all the questions you SHOULD have about them. The day allows for the easy exchange of communication between you and the groups rather than you having to call or email them to ask your questions which in turn, makes you less likely to ask. Here's how the day went for me:

12:30pm - First Seminar: AND NOW... WHAT? NEXT STEPS FOR SHORT FILMMAKERS.
I didn't read into the bio for this session too much before I rocked up and I was worried about being late too so really had no idea what to expect (the best way to go into a seminar) Hosted by Open Channel and moderated by Marc Gracie, the forum was organized to allow 4 key short filmmakers to discuss their pathways into the industry and what the next step is for them as content makers. These filmmakers included Andy Mullins (of Sand Hill Road films, director of the SKFF award winning Minnie Loves Junior); Rebecca Penniston-Bird (of Renegade Films); Glendyn Ivin (of Exit films and Director of Playground); and finally, Thomas Baricevic (of Jackson Black Films and director of Home)
All the panels members were invited to speak of their experiences with the industry and it was surprising to hear how differently everyone started out. Glendyn comes from a design background and worked as a graphic designer for 10 years before undergoing what he called "an early mid life crisis" at the age of 27. From there, he went on to do a postgrad at VCA, a move which he contributes to his success as a filmmaker (Glendyn won the Palme D'or in 2003 for his movie Crackerbag)

Thomas began his career as an engineer, then went on to study at VCA in the sculpture and then film courses. His Croatian background has influenced many of his projects and his films are considered to be highly multicultural works of art. Rebecca's career began when after having made short films for a while, Renegade films chanced upon her showreel and offered her a job. Since then, she has been working for Renegade as a Director/Producer, with the company's focus ranging from TVCs to Television series. Rebecca also studied the Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University. Finally, Andy Mullins' career neither originated in tertiary education or filmmaking placements on film sets. Rather, his brother and him set up a line of pubs which helped to fund Minnie Loves Junior. Andy attributed his success with the film to the success he had in his hospitality business.

The remainder of the seminar consisted of Gracie guiding the filmmakers to speak about their experiences in the industry focusing on how they developed their own works of art and how they have then progressed to the level they are right now in their careers. Throughout the seminar, each person provided a few interesting tips for filmmaking. From Glendyn, I found out that most DOP's find it difficult to look at a script visually in the same way a director does. This means that for a lot of writers, he has found that many of them have their worked turned down specifically because "they can't see beyond the script." Andy spoke of the importance of having another business or career to support you financially during production. All of the filmmakers in fact mentioned how they had some other form of income separate to their filmmaking and how this was integral to them being able to finance their films.

I'm trying very hard to summarize everything I learned during the seminar but it is very difficult ad these guys just had one useful tidbit after another. In dot form, here are the other pointers the group provided:

- Q. What is a producer?
Glendyn - a producer is the person who finds you an elephant. The amount of money they have will determine how shiny that elephant is but you can bet on it that a great producer will go to great lengths to get you that elephant. "If you team up with a producer and become very tight, it can turn into a scenario where if you're not working, they're not working, and if they're not working, you're not working."
- Producer director roles are complimentary
Adam - Directors have to have an element of producer in them to get stuff done.
Thomas - worked with quite a few producers. At the start, you end up becoming a producer in order to get the ball rolling

- Q. . Career pathways are about material ideas but are also beyond materials as well. How do you find your material?
Glendyn- made a decision earlier this year that when offered a script, doesn't want to know how much money is attached. Asks himself, do I want to spend time making this? You choose to do work that you want to do not that you have to do. That work is going to be better than the work you have to do and better work will attract better work.
Andy - scenes, production going on inside his head. The way I look at the world, I am always asking, are people interested in this, would they pay for it, is it interesting? "Material comes to me in the format of is this commercial, if two people turn up, would they tell others?"(not verbatim)
- 'have to direct that film to make it the best film that anyone has seen for that script, not to further your career'
Gracie - the rigor of script is much greater. For young filmmakers, you have to be aware of how hard it is to get stuff put on screen.
Thomas - over the summer, was fishing for something to do. Spent a whole lot of time digging in the backyard. Found his material through that. Spent last four five months enduring to get this project off the ground.
Rebecca - "everyday is jam-packed with material." Rarely see that reflected in the script. She is a reluctant writer. Enjoys the process but doesn't have the passion to do it. Likes to find people who do have that passion.

Q. How can you progress from making corporate videos to making commercials?
Glendyn- the trick is, regardless of how good your shorts are, it doesn't make any sense to the ad world unless it is 30 seconds long. Cut your short reel down to 30 seconds to show that you can tell a story in 30 seconds. -(THIS IS A GREAT IDEA!!!)
- The industry overall, everybody is looking for the idea that you hopefully respond to on a personal idea, the more original the idea, the more likely people will respond to it
Rebecca - it's not a world of creativity. Ad world tends to ask you not to do anything too creative. They want to sell a toaster, thats all.
Glendyn - didn't make any money from ads for 3-4 years. Juniors at Exit films are freaking out because they can't see a way to make money either. Your bank balance goes down but the work stays there.

Q. When is it worth giving away your work?
Thomas - depends on how desperate you are to make a film. Have to protect your work at some point as well.
Rebecca - "if you're passionate about tennis, is that the best avenue for making a tennis film?" (questioner asked whether she should make film for Australian open film comp)
Gracie - in the real world, you generally don't want to hold on to your work. If you come up to me and say 'I have great idea but I can't tell you about it yet because I haven't worked out how to protect it yet', I'm not going to hang about till you have figured it out.
Glendyn - short films don't make money. It's more about the calling card.
Andy - Do it because the process of doing it is another film made. It's hard to get a seat at the table; scratch and crawl your way up to get that seat. Give your films away to get in.

Q. What is the next step after the short?
Gracie - it depends on how good the last film was. Nash(Edgerton) had to reinvent his career. His feature wasnt so good. He went back to making shorts and now he can go back to making another feature.
Glendyn - "I love making shorts. You either love it or you don't. I would just love to make another short."
Andy - It's easy. do something a little different to the last film you made.
Thomas - you will learn something from making the last film you made.
Gracie - the important thing about shooting film is shooting film.
Glendon- you feel so much better making a mistake on the films you care about then the ones you don't.

Q. Is it good to look forward to making features after shorts?
Glendyn - greatest experience of my life making a feature film. Not necessarily something I want to make again.

Q. Why don't people go see Australian films?
Rebecca - there have been too many disappointments. Once they see one bad film, that taints their experience. We need to be more ambitious
Andy- disagrees with the idea that Australians don't see Australian films. When they hit, they hit hard.
Gracie - making short films or features is about making other worlds. You can do it in ads, shorts, features. It's a way to make more lives. Whether the path to feature films is there or not, it's still a difficult one.
Glendyn- if that's something you really want to do, you have to do it. .

-working with and finding your crew:
Andy - where does the line blur in short films and docos for producer/director? Called up his line producer/editor/cinematographer and kept calling to say that he loved their work and wanted to work with them

So there you have it. A MAJOR summary of the seminar but hopefully you found some of it interesting/useful. And I'm going to say this again but you HAVE to take advantage of this sort of stuff going on in Melbourne. It's not hard to find out about seminars and events like SKFF happening in this great city - the key is just being open to finding it. Sign up to newsletters. Read Inside Film, Encore and ScreenHub to be up to date with the current events. And more than anything, get the website of your favorite director/producer/writer/crew on an RSS feed and know what is happening with the them and what they are doing. Being up to date with them will give you a better chance of communicating with them if you do get the chance to meet them at some point.

I'm going to leave you with a quote from the seminar by the host which I think sums up the main point of the day and I hope you take note:

Marc Gracie - "You make that path. No one ever, ever opens that door for you."

St Kilda 2011 - Top 100 Session 1

After arriving to the beautifully lit Astor Theatre, I hastly ran around the foyer looking for, well everything: Annie Helps, the marketing coordinator for SKFF; Anisha, the girl who was supposed to be helping me with the Awards forms; and the Inside Film box with everything I needed for the night. As well as this, I was extremely conscious of the fact that people were already queing for the first session and my window to hand out the forms was closing fast. Thankfully, at 7:25pm, I raced around hurriedly handing out forms left, right and center to everyone who would acknowledge, looking very red in the face and probably confusing a lot of people by trying to explain in one breath that "withoutanemailitsnotvalidandwhenyou'redonepleaseputitintheboxoutside." Hectic.

Then the blissful calm as I finally got to sit in on the session, my favourite part of the job. I missed the first and last films unfortunately as I had to pop back in and out of the theatre before everyone else did but here is what I did see:

2. Home - a bizarre story about a home delivery guy, Ryan, who is on the way to a delivery. In a character development which could have outrivaled Scorsese's Taxi Driver, the film finally arrives at Ryan's first delivery. Frank doesn't open the door which causes Ryan to go around the house to the backyard, discovering an unpleasant sight. The rest of the film deals with the idea of what could happen if you suddenly were able to completely acquire somebody else's life but personally, I don't think the filmmakers focused on the right aspects. The camera they used was very nice (a Canon Mark II 5D or something similar) but the shots were unimaginative and badly. All in all the film could have been a lot better I feel if they had either sped everything up or left our the last third of the narrative.

3. Stony Point - this was a really beautiful short and one that caught my eye in the program. The story focuses on two sisters visiting Stony Point, a small coastal town, in what we would assume is summer. There, the girls encounter a past fling and a disruptive, meddling city girl like themselves who enjoys playing with people's emotions. The film was just really sweet but not to the point where you would end up with type 2 diabetes at the end of it. Thanks to one of the characters, the film had an edge and suspense about it which had you thinking "what's going to happen next?!" The cinematography was also really beautiful with a nice coral colour scheme and great wideshots to show off the landscape which so many of us I think can relate to a past memory of family road trips to the middle of nowhere.

4. Minnie Loves Junior- I really didn't like Minnie Loves Junior and for that I am a little upset because I think the film had potential. For me, there was just too much of it I believe and had it been shorter, it may have been more entertaining. There were times for me unfortunately when I caught myself asking "when is this going to end?" I will say though that when it did eventually come to a close, the film finished really succinctly and with a super cute gesture which left the audience with the warm and fuzzies. There was a lot that could have been done with the setting in this film which I don't think was considered. A nice film but not my favourite by far.

5. I Make Coffee - This film was really interesting. Reading the blurb I had to stop myself from placing it in the "nobody-talks-to-me-so-I'm-going-to-make-a-film" category of filmmakers and I'm glad I did because it really wasn't that at all. The film was very character based which was great because our protagonist was hilarious. Using a unique form which crisscrossed between supposedly amateur film-making on a SD video cam and title cards matching to the dialogue, the film had a very fast pace about it which forced you to keep up. All in all it was just a really cute little spiel about a guy and his coffee shop and what was great was that him and his friends obviously had fun making it.

6. Beat - it took me FOREVER to work out who the lead actor was in this mini-short but I finally googled it out and it was none other than the prestigious Peter O'Brien (George Freeman from Underbelly for those of you who still don't know who I'm talking about.) I think it was because my brain was so preoccupied with trying to work out who Peter was that I subsequently did not follow the story properly and hence did not really get the film but I think there is another reason for this. The film opens in a seedy bathroom and two guys enter which automatically sets up a few thoughts. The film plays with these thoughts right up until the end when the twist comes in. However, it was the twist that threw me and it was only until just now that I managed to work out why the film ended the way it did (I'm not one for spoilers so let me know what your thoughts are when you see it) I think though the film needed to be just that little more clear about the ending and explaining O'Brien's character's unique talent so that the audience didn't leave the theatre completely dumbfounded (although I do feel really stupid for not having thought of my theory before now).

With all of these films, I just wanted to put it out there that these are just my own personal reflections and ruminations about the screening. There are a lot of factors that can influence someone's opinion about a film and I don't want my blog to be one of them. Go to the festival, see the films for yourself and hit me up with your thoughts. More to come on Friday.

St Kilda 2011 - Opening Night

WOW! What a start to what is slowly becoming one of my favourite Australian film festivals.

Entering the grand Palais Theatre out near Acland St out of the frosty Melbourne air, I was greeted by the same nostalgic wave that hit me last year, reminding me of my first attendance of the festival. St Kilda is special to me as it was the first film festival I attended when I moved to Melbourne and it has become a yearly tradition ever since. I was fortunate enough this year to score a double pass for my sister and I to attend the opening night and the two of us ascended to the second storey to meet up with a few of my other friends who were joining us for the night's festivities. The theatre was packed to the brim with people from all walks of the film appreciation life - filmmakers, actors, investors, producers, critics, fans and general members of the public who just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I even spotted my fair share of celebs including Eddie Perfect (Offspring), Stefan Dennis (Paul from Neighbours) and Gyton Grantley (Underbelly), although admittedly I saw him at Vineyards on the way to the opening, not actually in the theatre itself.

At 8pm on the dot, the chimes began and we made our holy ascent to the 'dress circle' or what I would coin more appropriately, the "stairs of hell." I don't think I had ever sat so far back from the stage before but even from there, we could still see all of the action. Finally, the lights dimmed and a familiar face graced the stage to welcome everyone to the festival. Shane Jacobson, Australia's most lovable loo cleaner, performed yet another brilliant MC job throwing in some gut-clenching one liners, a few eye-brow raising quips, but enough cheer and merriment to get everyone through the other, more dull (sorry, there is no other word for the Mayor's speech) introductions by the sponsors and organizers.

AND THEN, the films. Starting with Pop, the audience were exposed to the more subtle approach of film making. With no dialogue, our attention was drawn to the impeccable sound design and performances given by the 2 man cast as well as the beautiful cinematography featured throughout. There was a reminiscence of the sound-to-visual editing style seen in every Edgar Wright film but not to such a degree that its prominent. Rather, the film focuses on the beauty of communication through non-verbal means whilst exploring father-son relationships.

Next was the highly anticipated Suburbia, featuring Don Hany (Offspring) and what I had hoped would be an Underbelly homage. Not quite. Without giving too much away, the film portrayed the real life events of a man who uncovers a shooting in his own neighborhood. But that's about it. The film's focus on its technical elements (you really need to see the film in order to understand what I'm talking about) caused there to be a lack of detail undertaken with the script and plot itself. In the end, we just ended up watching Hany running a Northern Sydney suburb under the false impression that something utterly disastrous was about to happen. Rather disappointingly, it didn't and the film ended with a massive anti-climax which left many in the audience perplexed or unsatisfied.

From there we moved into the first animation presentation of the festival from the Berlin Film festival. A Lost and Found Box of Human Sensation was an incredible story that was difficult to keep up with accompanied by some amazing computer-generated imagery. With a Tim Burton-esque feel, the film had great editing and narrative rhythm but lost its audience around the 4th Act.  Taken separately, the animation and the story are great elements. Together however, they were slightly confusing and possibly too ambitious for a short film. I would really recommend reading the script however if you can get your hands on it as it was fascinating trying to keep up throughout the screening.

The 4th film of the night was Beesting starring Brendan Cowell and another one of the films I was looking forward to. Like Pop (but less successfully), Beesting explores the relationship between a widowed man and his young son who both share the same affections for the boy's teacher. A little sneakily, the film flirts with the idea of the teacher having a crush on the son but that is quickly dissipated by the film's final act. Again, like Suburbia, the film finished at a moment I would not have have thought wise, neither focusing on the son's reaction to his father's behaviour to make us sympathisise with him, nor revealing a witty twist for the son to seek revenge. It was a film about nothing I would say and whilst there were some cute moments, it wasn't what I was hoping for. The sound mixing also pissed me off at times.

The SoundKilda entry for the night was Old Fitzroy, a beautifully photographer music video based on a story about one of Melbourne's most cultural suburbs and really if I were to award it any form it would simply be a photographic essay. The shots were beautifully retouched in a darkly contrasted black and white with a few focus pulls and long DOP(depth of field)'s thrown in here and there as well. It would be the sort of thing I would hope the City of Yarra would use to their advantage.

And finally, THE film of the festival, if not the year, that shook everyone to the core and turned their world upside down. Bear, the brilliant production by Nash Edgerton and David Michod, was a film I already knew would be amazing but what I wasn't anticipating was just how incredible these two men are when put in the same room together. Following a similar trajectory to Spider (for all of you familiar with their work but don't let that fool into thinking you can guess what happens in Bear), the film has that perfect blend for narrative development in the way it establishes character, mysteriously suggests the plot's direction, and then hits you out of left field with the twist of the century. I knew it was coming but even I was shocked by the ending and everyone in the audience was in rapture. It really was a brilliant piece of filmmaking and the boys at Blue-Tongue should be very proud.

To cap off the wonderful evening, I bumped into Adam Elliott outside the theatre again who I had gone to see speak at RMIT last night and got to have a nice chat with him about the films. So all in all, a great start to the 2011 St Kilda Film Festival and I can't wait for tomorrow's screening.