The first round winner of the Avid® Asia-Pacific Student Grant contest has been announced. Martin Keyes, a 19-year-old first year student at SAE, QANTM College, Sydney, has won for his 60-clip entitled Sheep Shearing Documentary.
Martin’s entry was selected out of a strong field of over 75 students from around the Asia-Pacific region, including entrants from China, Japan, New Zealand and Korea. Martin won a mobile studio consisting of Avid Media Composer® editing software on an HP Compaq Mobile Workstation, and a Sony Digital Video Camera, totalling over AUS$20,000.
On choosing the winner, the judging panel announced, ‘This is a beautifully shot trailer that effectively highlights the lives of sheep shearers in Australia, while showcasing the beauty of the environment in which they work. The flow of the story was seamless and the editing was unobtrusive, allowing the footage to take a life of its own, bringing the viewer on a journey through the camera’s eyes.’
Martin shot his winning entry on a Sony DCR-TRV950 Mini DV camera, and spent one day shooting his documentary on his family’s sheep station in outback New South Wales. When asked what he plans to do with his new mobile studio, Martin stated that he plans to take advantage of the increased power of the Avid Media Composer system and the Sony DV Camera to shoot surfing documentaries, and to give him the edge on assignment work he undertakes as part of his Diploma of Screen studies at QANTM College.
The Avid Asia-Pacific contest, which is run in conjunction with Sony and HP, continues for the next 10 months and is designed to encourage students’ creativity, enthusiasm and commitment to media studies. Grants are awarded every two months, and the deadline for Round Two is 30th November 2007.
Students are asked to upload a 60 second video clip to http://www.avid-asia.com/competitions. The clip can be new or old content created by the student either in the course of their studies or during their own time, and the winning entries will be judged on originality and creativity.
To view Martin’s winning entry, Sheep Shearing Documentary visi http://www.avid.com/exchange/files/27/asia_pac_aug_2007/entry273283.aspx
[release from Avid]