The entire Year 10 Media Arts cohort, with Mr Henderson, Mrs Coombes and Mr Wand, headed up to the Home of The Arts, Surfers Paradise, to check out the Gold Coast Film Festival Monday 23 April. We were excited about this awesome opportunity the school had given us, as amateur filmmakers, to observe and learn countless tips being given to us by people who had managed to get into this incredibly competitive industry.

The first film we watched was Jeffrey, a documentary set in the Dominican Republic that chronicles a young boy’s dreams to become a reggaeton star. Filmmaker Yanillys Perez spent four years documenting the life of Joselito de la Cruz and his neighborhood, whom she first found cleaning car windshields for money. After this, we had a session with a professional film reviewer in which we found ourselves critically analyzing some hit films and possibly reconsidering them.

We then watched Window Horses, a Canadian animated film about a young girl who is aspiring poet unexpectedly being invited to a poetry festival in Iran and finding out her family history along the way. We then had another session where two Brisbane animators who own a group called Like a Photon, who have made many successful children’s TV shows, taught us about animated character design and gave us examples from some of the all-time greatest animated movies.

We are extremely grateful to Somerset for giving us this great opportunity to learn from some experts in this field. We all left with some new knowledge and were excited about the future opportunities we had.

Subscribe to our newsletter