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Local Entry Goes to LA

Local student teams up with rock legend for Forster Film Festival entry
Jacqui Hutchens was very nervous when she turned up at Forster Film Festival office with her short film.

"It's nothing much," she said, opening her laptop. "It's a bit lame in places."

She was quite wrong.

Film Festival director Greg Smith saw it as a fantastic piece of stop-animation, frame-by-frame chalk board drawings of a character confronting the issue of women's rights.

There was however one enormous problem. The music was ripped.

"The difference between a mediocre film and a good film usually comes down to the soundtrack," said Greg Smith, having just completed watching the hundredth entry to this year's Festival.

"We have to reject a certain amount of entries because they don't have copyright to the music they use. It's called intellectual property theft and means we can't show it at the festival."

School students are waived certain copyright laws for their school projects and Jacqui's Year 12 Major Art project used Californian musician Greg Laswell's song "Comes and Goes".

Wanting to show the film, and encourage a budding local filmmaker, Greg Smith emailed Greg Laswell's management in California.

Their reply the next day had a fun, supportive tone, and asked for further info.

Jacqui has since been in further contact with Laswell's management and Sony USA. She has just been given copyright clearance to show her short with Laswell's song at the Festival.

"This is a great outcome for the Festival audience, who now get to see a local student teaming up with a major label musician" said Greg Smith.

"The green light also sends a positive and supportive message to local students and filmmakers: that even in from lofty offices of Los Angeles, short filmmaking comes down to a lot of artists working together."

"She's a very talented, enthusiastic student," said Jacqui's Visual Arts teacher Dee Hardinge. "It's a very impressive short film in which the music enhances the imagery."

Dee said that the film was a good example of the idea that not only do artists need to work together, the art forms need to work together to create a sum larger than the parts.

She said that Jacqui's film is showing the community that local students are interested in more than creating stuff that is only about drink and drugs and rock'n'roll.

"These kids really have something to give the community and the world. Their artwork stimulates dialogue in the community."

Great Lakes College On Board
One of the cash prizes for this year's Festival came from Great Lakes College. The Senior Campus Drama department has donated $150 to be awarded to the best entry from surrounding schools.

Instigated by Drama teacher Marion Johnson, the prize, said College Principal Steve Nicholas, is a "small but significant statement that the College supports the creative effort involved in entering a film in Forster Film Festival."

Marion Johnson said she was "thrilled to bits" by the standard of drama being represented in recent years by her senior students. "No matter how cheap and easy digital filmmaking becomes, filmmakers still need talented actors, and some of our students really are shining stars."

Marion said she was excited to be able to encourage local creativity with a cash prize for those students industrious enough to put their work up on the big screen.

(The prize was won by Jacqui Hutchens)