Eight women have been selected for a commercial directing mentorship, Screen Australia announced. As part of the Australian Directors’ Guild’s (ADG) Gender Matters initiative, these eight filmmakers will have the opportunity to shadow producers and directors at a production company for several months. “This will give them an in-depth look at commercial content production, as well the chance to meet potential clients and advertising agency representatives,” according to the source.
The Gender Matters mentorship recipients and their respective production companies are:
- Arielle Thomas — Otto Empire
- Bree Billington — Beautiful Pictures
- Cassie de Colling — Otto Empire
- Kate Halpin — Goodoil Films
- Laura Kurataya — Curious Films
- Lou Quill — Photoplay
- Natalie van den Dungen — Rabbit Content
- Sinead McDevitt — FINCH
Sinead McDevitt, who plans “to be a sponge over the coming six months to a year” and absorb all the information possible, said, “My first goal is to master the art of short form storytelling with the view of making longer pieces, so I saw this advertised and ‘Thought this is fantastic.’”
According to ADG President Samantha Lang, this program was launched in response to the “abysmal” number of women directors working in Australia. Women represent about 16 percent of feature film directors, and as Lang comments, “most alarmingly 10 percent of women directors are represented by commercial agencies in Australia. That doesn’t even mean that there are 10 percent of women directing commercials.”
Lang — who worked as a commercial director herself — recalled, “I really had to hone my craft in terms of visual storytelling, communicating something really concisely, and getting good performances.”
“If you look at someone like Garth Davis who won a lot of awards as a commercials director and then was noticed by Jane Campion and went on to do ‘Top of the Lake’ and then ‘Lion,’ commercials are incredibly instrumental in developing the voices of directors,” she continued.
Interested filmmakers will be able to apply to the 2018 Commercial & Content Directing Mentorships later this year.
This is the third major initiative for women filmmakers Australia has unveiled in as many weeks. Recently, Screen Australia introduced Doco180 for documentary filmmakers, and the National Film Board announced its plans to increase the number of women in creatives roles in film.
